The Wren

Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Child’s Talk in April’ is a delightful metaphor for the nest building and future plans of young love. Florence Harrison’s vignette pictured above appears in my Blackie and Sons edition of the writer’s poems.

This is the artist’s colour plate illustrating the poem.

One group of nest builders currently active in our garden are wrens, which being our smallest native birds, featured on our farthing coin pre-decimalisation.

Unfortunately I have not been able to photograph one of these nippy little birds, and certainly not remain as close as the two children pictured above, so I drew one instead.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s deliciously hot and spicy pasta arrabbiata, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Recital.