The Bird-Catcher

Poem by Guy De Maupassant Period 19th century

The bird-catcher Love goes strolling
When the hillsides are in bloom,
Searching the bushes and the plain;
And every evening his cage is full
Of the little birds he has taken.

As soon as the night fades away
He comes, carefully stretches his line,
Drops the lime from place to place,
Then sows, to hide the trace,
A few grains of oats or millet.

He lies in ambush at the corner of a hedge,
Lies down on the banks of streams,
Slips crawling beneath the tall trees,
For fear his foot may frighten
The swift little birds.

Under the lily of the valley and the periwinkle
The cunning child hides his nets,
Or else beneath the white hawthorn
Where fall, like an avalanche,
Linnets, finches, goldfinches.

Sometimes from a supple twig
Of green osier or rosemary
He makes a trap, and then he watches
For the little birds in high spirits
That come to peck at his grain.

Giddy, joyful and swift,
Soon a little bird draws near:
It looks with a candid air,
Takes heart, tastes the treacherous grain,
And catches its foot in the net.

And the bird-catcher Love leads it away
Far from the fresh and flowering hillsides,
Far from the bushes and the plain,
And every evening his cage is full
Of the little birds he has taken.

Guy de Maupassant

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