Baby Babbles--only one,
Now to sit up has begun.
Little Babbles quite turned two
Walks as well as I and you.
And Miss Babbles one, two, three
Has a teaspoon at her tea.
But her Highness at four
Learns to open the front door.
And her Majesty--now six,
Can her shoestring neatly fix.
Babbles, Babbles, have a care,
You will soon put up your hair!
The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child
Walked out into the street
And splashed in all the puddles till
She had such shocking feet.
The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child
Stayed quietly in the house
And sat upon the fender stool
As still as any mouse.
The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child,
Her hands were black as ink;
She would come running through the house
And begging for a drink.
The Patent-Leather-Slipper-Child,
Her hands were white as snow;
She did not like to play around,
She only liked to sew.
In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said: “Do not eat the poor butterfly.”
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of the plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother’s lap.
In the tired face of the mirror
There is a blue curtain reflected.
If I could lift the reflection,
Peer a little beyond, I would see
A boy crying
Because his sister is ill in another room
And he has no one to play with:
A boy listlessly scattering building blocks,
And crying,
Because no one will build for him the palace of Fairy Morgana.
I cannot lift the curtain:
It is stiff and frozen.
By the old toy cabinet,
I stand and turn over dusty things:
Chessmen--card games--hoops and balls--
Toy rifles, helmets, swords,
In the far corner
A doll's tea-set in a box.
Where are you, golden child,
Who gave tea to your dolls and me?
The golden child is growing old,
Further than Rome or Babylon
From you have passed those foolish years.
She lives--she suffers--she forgets.
By the old toy cabinet,
I idly stand and awkwardly
Finger the lock of the tea-set box.
What matter--why should I look inside,
I know not why, when I saw the little chair,
I suddenly desired to sit in it.
I know not why, when I sat in the little chair,
Everything changed, and life came back to me.
I am convinced no one at all has grown up in the house,
The break that I dreamed, itself was a dream and is broken.
I will sit in the little chair and wait,
Till the others come looking after me.
And if it is after nightfall they will come,
So much the better.
For the little chair holds me as tightly as death;
And rocking in it, I can hear it whisper strange things.
I can recall the day
When childhood died.
I had grown thin and tall
And eager-eyed.
Such a false happiness
Had seized me then;
A child, I saw myself
Man among men.
Now I see that I was
Ignorant, surprised,
As one for the surgeon's knife
Anæsthetized.
So that I did not know
What loomed before,
Nor how, a child, I became
A child no more.
Marlboro' and Waterloo and Trafalgar,
Tuileries, Talavera, Valenciennes,
Were strange names all, and all familiar;
For down their streets I went, early and late
(Is there a street where I have never been
Of all those hundreds, narrow, skyless, straight?)--
Early and late, they were my woods and meadows;
The rain upon their dust my summer smell;
Their scant herb and brown sparrows and harsh shadows
Were all my spring. Was there another spring?
I knew their noisy desolation well,
Drinking it up as a child drinks everything,
Knowing no other world than brick and stone,
With one rich memory of the earth all bright.
Now all is fallen into oblivion--
All that I was, in years of school and play,
It is here--the lime-tree in the garden path,
The lilac by the wall, the ivied wall
That was so high, the heavy, close-leaved creeper,
The harsh gate jarring on its hinges still,
The echoing clean flags--all
The same, the same, and never more the same.
That mound was once a hill,
The old lime-tree a forest (now as small
As the poor lilac by the ivied wall),
And this neglected narrow greenery
A wilderness, and I its king and keeper;
Lying upon the grass I saw the sky
And all its clouds: the garden edged the sky.
The harsh gate jars upon its hinges still.
Come over, come over the deepening river,
Come over again the dark torrent of years,
Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver,
And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.
Come, come back to the everlasting garden,
To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above.
Come back to the time when time brought no burden
And love was unconscious, knowing not love.
A MAN was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me what
Name was upon this place, and said that he
Was never here before. He told a lot
Of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said
The first mate of the Mary Ann done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And jolly good job too ; and he'd have gone
A long way to have killed him, and he had
A gold ring in one ear ; the other one
" Was bit off by a crocodile, bedad."
That's what he said. He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.
Oh ! for the welcome breath of country air,
With Summer skies and flowers,
To shout and feel once more the halcyon
Of gayer boyhood hours.
I think the sight of fields and shady lanes
Would ease my heart of pains.
To cool once more my thirst, where bubbled up
The waters of a spring,
Where I have seen the golden daffodils
And lillies flourishing.
My fevered heart would more than half forget
Its sighs, and vain regret.
Far, far away, from early scenes am I ;
And, too, my youth has fled;
For me a stranger's land, a stranger's sky.
That arches overhead.