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. THE OLD CRADLE. It is Hope gilds the future, Love wel. Then smile as your future is smiling, my comes it smiling; Jenny; Thus wags this old World, therefore I see you, except for those infantine stay not to ask, woes, “My future bids fair, is my future beguil- Little changed since you were but a small ing?" PicaninnyIf mask'd, still it pleases-then raise Your cheeks were so dimpled, so rosy not its mask. your toes! |