The busy birds, with nice selection, cull <br />Soft thistle-down, gray moss, and scatter'd wool; <br />Far from each prying eye the nest prepare, <br />Form'd of warm moss, and lined with softest hair. <br />Week after week, regardless of her food, <br />Th' incumbent linnet warms her future brood; <br />Each spotted egg with ivory bill she turns, <br />Day after day with fond impatience burns; <br />Hears the young prisoner chirping in his cell, <br />And breaks in hemispheres the fragile shell.<br /><br />Erasmus Darwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-linnet-s-nest/
