’t Is bedtime; say your hymn, and bid “Good-night;
God bless Mamma, Papa, and dear ones all.”
Your half-shut eyes beneath your eyelids fall,
Another minute, you will shut them quite.
Yes, I will carry you, put out the light,
And tuck you up, although you are so tall!
What will you give me, sleepy one, and call
My wages, if I settle you...
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Six Years Old
O THOU whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol,
Thou fairy voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream—
Suspended... -
My little girl is nested
Within her tiny bed,
With amber ringlets crested
Around her dainty head;
She lies so calm and stilly,
She breathes so soft and low,
She calls to mind a lily
Half-hidden in the snow.A weary little mortal
Has gone to slumberland;
The Pixies at the portal
Have caught her... -
Goldenhair climbed up on grandpapa’s knee;
Dear little Goldenhair! tired was she,
All the day busy as busy could be.Up in the morning as soon as ’t was light,
Out with the birds and butterflies bright,
Skipping about till the coming of night.Grandpapa toyed with the curls on her head.
“What has my baby been doing,” he said,... -
“now I lay,”—repeat it, darling.
“Lay me,” lisped the tiny lips
Of my daughter, kneeling, bending
O’er her folded finger-tips.“Down to sleep”—“To sleep,” she murmured,
And the curly head bent low;
“I pray the Lord,” I gently added;
“You can say it all, I know.”“Pray the Lord”—the sound came faintly,
Fainter... -
The Bairnies cuddle doon at nicht
Wi’ muckle faught an’ din;
“Oh try and sleep, ye waukrife rogues,
Your faither ’s comin’ in.”
They never heed a word I speak;
I try to gie a froon,
But aye I hap them up an’ cry,
“Oh, bairnies, cuddle doon.”Wee Jamie wi’ the curly heid—
He aye sleeps next the wa’—
... -
“my mother says I must not pass
Too near that glass;
She is afraid that I will see
A little witch that looks like me,
With a red, red mouth, to whisper low
The very thing I should not know!”Alack for all your mother’s care!
A bird of the air,
A wistful wind, or (I suppose
Sent by some hapless boy) a... -
When Dorothy and I took tea, we sat upon the floor;
No matter how much tea I drank, she always gave me more;
Our table was the scarlet box in which her tea-set came;
Our guests, an armless one-eyed doll, a wooden horse gone lame.
She poured out nothing, very fast,—the tea-pot tipped on high,—
And in the bowl found sugar lumps unseen by my dull eye.... -
There’s no dew left on the daisies and clover,
There’s no rain left in heaven.
I ’ve said my “seven times” over and over,—
Seven times one are seven.I am old,—so old I can write a letter;
My birthday lessons are done.
The lambs play always,—they know no better;
They are only one times one.O Moon! in the night...
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“O where, and O where
Is my bonnie laddie gone?”
—OLD SONG.ONE day, as I was going by
That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry
That chilled my very blood;
And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,
Bedaubed with grease and mud...