He was six years old, just six that day,
And I saw he had something important to say
As he held in his hand a broken toy.
He looked in my face for an instant, and then
He said, with a sigh, and a downcast eye,
“If I could live my life over again,
I think I could be a better boy!”
-
-
I studied my tables over and over, and backward and forward, too;
But I could n’t remember six times nine, and I did n’t know what to do,
Till sister told me to play with my doll, and not to bother my head.
“If you call her ‘Fifty-four’ for a while, you ’ll learn it by heart,” she said.So I took my favorite, Mary Ann (though I thought ’t was a dreadful shame...
-
The sparrow told it to the robin,
The robin told it to the wren,
Who passed it on, with sweet remark,
To thrush, and bobolink, and lark,
The news that dawn had come again. -
A million little diamonds
Twinkled on the trees;
And all the little maidens said:
“A jewel, if you please!”
But while they held their hands outstretched,
To catch the diamonds gay,
A million little sunbeams came,
And stole them all away. -
Hundreds of stars in the pretty sky;
Hundreds of shells on the shore together;
Hundreds of birds that go singing by;
Hundreds of bees in the sunny weather.Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn;
Hundreds of lambs in the purple clover;
Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn;
But only one mother the wide world over. -
Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover!
Crooning so drowsily, crying so low,
Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover!
Down into wonderland,
Down to the under-land,
Go, now go!
Down into wonderland go.Rockaby, lullaby, rain on the clover,
(Tears on the eyelids that waver and weep!)
Rockaby, lullaby—... -
Of heavenly stature, but most human smile,
Gyved with our faults he stands,
Truth’s white and Love’s red roses tendering us,
Whose thorns are in his hands. -
There came to port last Sunday night
The queerest little craft,
Without an inch of rigging on;
I looked and looked—and laughed!
It seemed so curious that she
Should cross the Unknown water,
And moor herself within my room—
My daughter! O, my daughter!Yet by these presents witness all
She ’s welcome fifty times... -
“love your neighbor as yourself,”—
So the parson preaches:
That ’s one half the Decalogue,—
So the prayer-book teaches.
Half my duty I can do
With but little labor,
For with all my heart and soul
I do love my neighbor.Mighty little credit, that,
To my self-denial;
Not to love her, though, might be... -
She ’s had a Vassar education,
And points with pride to her degrees;
She ’s studied household decoration;
She knows a dado from a frieze,
And tells Corots from Boldonis;
A Jacquemart etching, or a Haden,
A Whistler, too, perchance might please
A free and frank young Yankee maiden.She does not care for meditation;...