Thrifty the folk in the town of Soleure,

And they steadily ply their fathers’ trade;

Proud are they, too, that, year after year,

The watches and clocks of the world they have made.

Click go the seconds, kling go the hours,

In the town of Soleure the time is well kept!

Ever, new steel they cut and trim,

While into the street the filings are swept.

Only waste metal, unfit for use;

But it catches the sunshine and glitters still—

And what are those thrushes doing there,

Each with a scrap of steel in its bill?

The watchmaker’s boy has paused with his broom,

And he follows the birds with a boy’s keen eye;

Their secret he learns, and whither they go,

In the leafy tent of yon linden high!

Their secret he guards the springtime through,

And he smiles when he hears the young ones call;

“Never had birdlings a cradle like theirs—

Surely to them can no harm befall!”

When the leaves are flying and birds are flown,

’Tis out on the linden bough he swings—

The fearless lad that he is—and thence,

A wonderful nest of steel he brings!

It yet may be seen in the town of Soleure,

To show how the skill of the birds began

At the point where human skill fell short;

For they used what was waste in the hands of man.