y foreseeing,
Play on, play on,
My elfin John!
Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,--
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies, buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk,
With many a lamb-like frisk!
(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!)

Thou pretty opening rose!
(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!)
Balmy and breathing music like the South,--
(He really brings my heart into my mouth!)
Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star,--
(I wish that window had an iron bar!)
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove;--
(I'll tell you what, my love,
I cannot write unless he's sent above.)

Thomas Hood [1799-1845]

A NEW POET

I write. He sits beside my chair,
And scribbles, too, in hushed delight,
He dips his pen in charmed air:
What is it he pretends to write?

He toils and toils; the paper gives
No clue to aught he thinks. What then?
His little heart is glad; he lives
The poems that he cannot pen.

Strange fancies throng that baby brain.
What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes!
He stops--reflects--and now again
His unrecording pen he plies.

It seems a satire on myself,--
These dreamy nothings scrawled in air,
This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf,
Wouldst drive thy father to despair?

Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind
Persists in hoping,--schemes and strives
That there may linger with our kind
Some memory of our little lives.

Beneath his rock in the early world
Smiling the naked hunter lay,
And sketched on horn the spear he hurled,
The urus which he made his prey.

Like him I strive in hope my rhymes
May keep my name a little while,--
O child, who knows how many times
We two have made the angels smile!

William Canton [1845-

TO LAURA W--, TWO YEARS OLD

Bright be the skies that cover thee,
Child of the sunny brow,--
Bright as the dream flung over thee
By all that meets thee now,--
Thy heart is beating joyously,
Thy voice is like a bird's,
And sweetly breaks the melody
Of thy imperfect words.
I know no fount that gushes out
As gladly as thy tiny shout.

I would that thou might'st ever be
As beautiful as now,
That time might ever leave as free
Thy yet unwritten brow.
I would life were all poetry
To gentle measure set,
That naught but chastened melody
Might stain thine eye of jet,
Nor one discordant note be spoken,
Till God the cunning harp hath broken.

I would--but deeper things