Four Years Old:—A Nursery Song
… “Pien d’ amori,
Pien di canti, e pien di fiori.”—FRUGONI.
Full of little loves of ours,
Full of songs, and full of flowers.
AH, little ranting Johnny,
For ever blithe and bonny,
And singing nonny, nonny,
With hat just thrown upon ye;
Or whistling like the thrushes,...
SLEEP breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee
Smooths off the day’s annoy.
I sit me down, and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink,
That I had less to praise.
Thy sidelong pillowed meekness;
Thy thanks to all that aid;...
Jaffar, the Barmecide, the good vizier,
The poor man’s hope, the friend without a peer,
Jaffar was dead, slain by a doom unjust;
And guilty Haroun, sullen with mistrust
Of what the good, and e’en the bad, might say,
Ordained that no man living from that day
Should dare to speak his name on pain of death.
All Araby and Persia held their...
JENNY 1 kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in.
Time, you thief! who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in.
Say I ’m weary, say I ’m sad;
Say that health and wealth have missed me;
Say I ’m growing old, but add—
Jenny kissed me!
Note 1. “Jenny” was Mrs. Jane Welsh Carlyle. [back]...
Paraphrase from the Greek
T’ OTHER day, as I was twining
Roses for a crown to dine in,
What, of all things, midst the heap,
Should I light on, fast asleep,
But the little desperate elf,
The tiny traitor,—Love himself!
By the wings I pinched him up
Like a bee, and in a cup
Of my wine I plunged and sank him;
And what...
Abou Ben ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The vision raised its head,...
Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching your heart up at the feel of June,—
Sole voice that ’s heard amidst the lazy noon,
When even the bees lag at the summoning brass;
And you, warm little housekeeper, who class
With those who think the candles come too soon,
Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune
Nick the glad silent...
HALLO!—what?—where, what can it be
That strikes up so deliciously?
I never in my life—what? no!
That little tin box playing so?
It really seemed as if a sprite
Had struck among us swift and light,
And come from some minuter star
To treat us with his pearl guitar.
Hark! It scarcely ends the strain,
But it gives it o’er...
It flows through old, hushed Ægypt and its sands,
Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,—
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
...
There came a man, making his hasty moan
Before the Sultan Mahmoud on his throne,
And crying out, “My sorrow is my right,
And I will see the Sultan, and to-night.”
“Sorrow,” said Mahmoud, “is a reverend thing:
I recognize its right, as king with king;
Speak on.” “A fiend has got into my house,”
Exclaimed the staring man, “and tortures us...
