What Might Have Been


The little birds are singing
Above their speckled eggs,
The daddy long-legs talks about
His children’s lovely legs.

The red cow thinks her little calf
The best that there can be,
And my papa and my mamma
Are very proud of me!

And yet I might have been a bird,
And slept within a nest,
Or been a daddy-long-legs,
With scarcely any chest.

Or been a little calf or pig,
And grown to beef or ham;
I’m very, very, very glad
That I am what I am!