Sing a Song of Sixpence and Walter de la Mare
Is there anybody there? said the Blackbird
with a vengeful look in its eye,
while the smell of its baking colleagues
rose up from the royal game pie.
But nobody answered the Blackbird;
no voice, downstairs or up,
spoke out to own up to the plat du jour
on which they would shortly sup.
But the greedy King in his counting-house
and the pie-cook washing her smalls,
plus the Queen with her bread and honey,
had heard the Blackbird's calls.
And they heard the screech of its fury, too,
and the sound of beak on bone
and how the birds began to sing
when the pie-cook's nose was gone.
(first published in The Spectator)