On Sunday morning, then he comes
To church, and everybody smells
The blacking and the toilet soap
And camphor balls from Mr. Wells.
He wears his whiskers in a bunch,
And wears his glasses on his head.
I mustn't call him Old Man Wells--
No matter--that's what Father said.
And when the little blacking smells
And camphor balls and soap begin,
I do not have to look to know
That Mr. Wells is coming in.
All through the garden I went and went,
And I walked in under the butterbean tent.
The poles leaned up like a good tepee
And made a nice little house for me.
I had a hard brown clod for a seat,
And all outside was a cool green street.
A little green worm and a butterfly
And a cricket-like thing that could hop went by.
Hidden away there were flocks and flocks
Of bugs that could go like little clocks.
Such a good day it was when I spent
A long, long while in the butterbean tent.
One day they came; I heard their feet.
They made a tapping on the street.
And as they passed before our trees,
Their shawls blew out in curves like threes,
And bent again in twos and L's;
The wind blew on their rosaries
And made them ring like little bells.
He holds his songbook very low,
And then he stretches down his face,
And Mother said, "You mustn't watch,
He's only singing bass."
He makes his voice go walking down,
Or else he hurries twice as fast
As all the rest, but even then
He finishes the song the last.
And when I see him singing there,
I wonder if he knows it all
About Leviticus and Shem
And Deuteronomy and Saul.
When I lay down
In a clover place,
With eyelids closed,
In a clover place,
A little wind came to my face.
One gentle wind
Blew on my mouth,
And I said, "It will quiver by.
What little wind now can it be?"
And I lay still
Where the clovers were.
But when I raised my lids to see,
Then it was a butterfly.
And it was Sunday everywhere,
And Father pinned a rose on me
And said he guessed he'd better take
Me down to see Miss Kate-Marie.
And when I went it all turned out
To be a Sunday school, and there
Miss Kate-Marie was very good
And let me stand beside her chair.
Her hat was made of yellow lace;
Her dress was very soft and thin,
And when she talked her little tongue
Was always wriggling out and in.
I liked to smell my pretty rose;
I liked to feel her silky dress.
She held a very little book
And asked the things for us to guess.
When I can count the numbers far,
And know all the figures that there are,
Then I'll know everything, and I
Can know about the ground and sky,
And all the little bugs I see,
And I'll count the leaves on the silver-leaf tree,
And all the days that ever can be.
I'll know all the cows and sheep that pass,
And I'll know all the grass,
And all the places far away,
And I'll know everything some day.
When I am playing by myself,
And all the boys are lost around,
Then I can hear the water go;
It makes a little talking sound.
Along the rocks below the tree,
I see it ripple up and wink;
And I can hear it saying on,
"And do you think? And do you think?"
A bug shoots by that snaps and ticks,
And a bird flies up beside the tree
To go into the sky to sing.
I hear it say, "Killdee, killdee!"
Or else a yellow cow comes down
To splash a while and have a drink.
But when she goes I still can hear
The water say, "And do you think?"
I liked to go to the branch today;
I liked to play with the wiggletails there.
And five little smells and one big smell
Were going round in the air.
One was the water, a little cold smell,
And one was mud and that was more,
And one was the smell of cool wet moss,
And one was some fennel up on the shore.
And the one big smell came out of the mint,
And one was something I couldn't tell.
And the five little ones and the big one
All went together very well.
A little bush
At the picnic place,
A little bush could talk to me.
I ran away
And hid myself,
And I found a bush that could talk to me,
A smooth little bush said a word to me.
We stopped at the branch on the way to the hill.
We stopped at the water a while and played.
We hid our things by the osage tree
And took off our shoes and stockings to wade.
There is sand at the bottom that bites at your feet,
And there is a rock where the waterfall goes.
You can poke your foot in the foamy part
And feel how the water runs over your toes.
The little black spiders that walk on the top
Of the water are hard and stiff and cool.
And I saw some wiggletails going around,
And some slippery minnows that live in the pool.
And where it is smooth there is moss on a stone,
And where it is shallow and almost dry
The rocks are broken and hot in the sun,
And a rough little water goes hurrying by.
Friday came and the circus was there,
And Mother said that the twins and I
And Charles and Clarence and all of us
Could go out and see the parade go by.
And there were wagons with pictures on,
And you never could guess what they had inside,
Nobody could guess, for the doors were shut,
And there was a dog that a monkey could ride.
A man on the top of a sort of cart
Was clapping his hands and making a talk.
And the elephant came--he can step pretty far--
It made us laugh to see him walk.
Three beautiful ladies came riding by,
And each one had on a golden dress,
And each one had a golden whip.
They were queens of Sheba, I guess.