AND this was your Cradle? Why, surely, To hint at my Jenny, Such cosy dimensions go clearly to show You were an exceedingly small Picaninny Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago. scandal; an infantile frailty's a Let bygones be bygones, for somebody knows It was bliss such a Baby to dance and to dandle, Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes! Your baby days flow'd in a much-troubled channel: I see you, as then, in your impotent strife, A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel, Perplex'd with the newly found fardel of Life. Ay, here is your Cradle; and Hope, a bright spirit, With Love now is watching beside it, I know. They guard the wee Nest it was yours to inherit Some nineteen or twenty short sum mers ago. It is Hope gilds the future, Love wel- Then smile as your future is smiling, my "My future bids fair, is my future beguil- Little changed since you were but a small ing?" If mask'd, still it pleases-then raise not its mask. Picaninny Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy your toes! Is Life a poor coil some would gladly be Ay, here is your Cradle, much, much to CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS. Was kissing up the April showers, I saw fair Childhood hard at play Upon a bank of blushing flowers: Happy-he knew not whence or how,And smiling,-who could choose but love him? For not more glad than Childhood's brow Was the blue Heaven that beam'd above him. Old Time, in most appalling wrath, That valley's green repose invaded; The brooks grew dry upon his path, The birds were mute, the lilies faded. But Time so swiftly wing'd his flight, In haste a Grecian tomb to batter, That Childhood watch'd his paper kite, And knew just nothing of the matter. With curling lip and glancing eye Guilt gazed upon the scene a minute; But Childhood's glance of purity Had such a holy spell within it, That the dark demon to the air Spread forth again his baffled pinion, And hid his envy and despair, Self-tortured, in his own dominion. Then stepp'd a gloomy phantom up, daughter And proffer'd him a fearful cup Full to the brim of bitter water: Poor Childhood bade her tell her name; And when the beldame mutter'd— "Sorrow," He said: "Don't interrupt my game; I'll taste it, if I must, to-morrow." The Muse of Pindus thither came, And woo'd him with the softest numbers That ever scatter'd wealth and fame Upon a youthful poet's slumbers; Tho' sweet the music of the lay, To Childhood it was all a riddle, And "Oh," he cried, "do send away That noisy woman with the fiddle!" |