Humming-Bird
![Humming-Bird - English Children's Songs - England - Mama Lisa's World: Children's Songs and Rhymes from Around the World - Intro Image Humming-Bird - English Children's Songs - England - Mama Lisa's World: Children's Songs and Rhymes from Around the World - Intro Image](https://www.mamalisa.com/images/non_ml_images/primordial_1914.gif)
Humming-Bird
Poem
I can imagine, in some otherworld
Primeval-dumb, far back
In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed,
Humming-birds raced down the avenues.
Before anything had a soul,
While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate,
This little bit chipped off in brilliance
And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.
I believe there were no flowers, then,
In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation.
I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.
Probably he was big
As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big.
Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.
We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.
Notes
Written by D.H. Lawrence.
![Listen](https://www.mamalisa.com/images/ml_images/listen_english.jpg)
Thanks and Acknowledgements
Images from "The Wonder of Life" (1914) by J. Arthur Thomson.