The Changeling

By Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) 
:Toll no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,
:Waste no sighs;
:There are my sister, there is my little brother
:Who plays in the place called Paradise,
:Your children all, your children for ever;
:But I, so wild,
:Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,
:Never, I know, but half your child! 
:In the garden at play, all day, last summer,
:Far and away I heard
:The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,
:The dearest, clearest call of a bird.
:It lived down there in the deep green hollow,
:My own old home, and the fairies say
:The word of a bird is a thing to follow,
:So I was away a night and a day. 
:One evening, too, by the nursery fire,
:We snuggled close and sat round so still,
:When suddenly as the wind blew higher,
:Something scratched on the window-sill,
:A pinched brown face peered in-I shivered;
:No one listened or seemed to see;
:The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered,
:Whoo-I knew it had come for me;
:Some are as bad as bad can be!
:All night long they danced in the rain,
:Round and round in dripping chain,
:Threw their caps at the window-pane,
:Tried to make me scream and shout
:And fling the bedclothes all about;
:I meant to stay in bed that night,
:And if only you had left a light
:They would never have got me out! 
:Sometimes I wouldn't speak, you see,
:Or answer when you spoke to me,
:Because in the long, still dusks or Spring
:You can hear the whole world whispering:
:The shy green grasses making love,
:The feathers grow on the dear, grey dove,
:The tiny heart of the redstart beat,
:The patter of the squirrel's feet,
:The pebbles pushing in the silver streams, 
:The rushes talking in their dreams,
:The swish-swish of the bat's black wings
:The wild-wood bluebell's sweet tings-tings,
:Humming and hammering at your ear,
:Everything there is to hear
:In the heart of hidden things,
:But not in the midst of the nursery riot.
:That's why I wanted to be quiet,
:Couldn't do my sums, or sing,
:Or settle down to anything.
:And when, for that, I was sent upstairs
:I did kneel down to say my prayers;
:But the King who sits on your high church steeple
:Has nothing to do with us fairy people! 
:'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,
:Learned all my lessons and liked to play,
:And dearly I loved the little pale brother
:Whom some other birds must have called away.
:Why did They bring me here to make me
:Not quite bad and not quite good,
:Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me
:Back to their wet, wild wood?
:Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,
:The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,
:While the best of us are twining twigs
:And the rest of us are whining
:In the hollow by the stream
:Black and chill are Their nights on the wold;
:And They live so long and They feel no pain:
:I shall grow up, but never grow old,
:I shall always, always be very cold,
:I shall never come back again!