The dear lumpish baby, Hails us with his bright eye, stumbling through the grass; Kisses our pale pathway leaves, that felt the bridegroom pass. Age, the withered clinger, And wraps the thought of his last bed in his childhood's daisies. See and scorn all duller Taste, how Heaven loves color; How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green; And a thousand flushing hues made solely to be seen; Chill the silver showers, And what a red mouth is the rose, the woman of her flowers. Uselessness divinest Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use; Travellers, weary-eyed, Unto sick and prisoned thoughts, we give a sudden truce; Not a poor town window Loves its sickliest planting, But its wall speaks loftier truth than Babylonian vaunting. Sagest yet the uses Mixed with our sweet juices, Whether man or May-fly profit by the balm; As fair fingers healed Knights from the olden field, We hold cups of the mightiest force to give the wildest, calm. Even the terror, poison, Hath its plea for blooming; Life it gives to reverent lips, though death to the presum ing. And, oh! our sweet soul-taker, The thief, the honey-maker, What a house hath he by the thymy glen! How the feasting fumes 'Till the gold cups overflow to the mouths of men! The butterflies come aping Those fine thieves of ours, And flutter round our rifled tops like tickled flowers with flowers. See those tops, how beauteous! Round some idol waits, as on their lord, the Nine. And taught, perchance, that dream Which the old Greek mountain dreamed upon nights divine. To expound such wonder Human speech avails not, Yet there dies no poorest weed, that such a glory exhales not. Think of all these treasures, Every one a marvel, more than thought can say; And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May; By the bee-birds haunted, And all those Amazonian plains, lone-lying as enchanted. Trees themselves are ours; Peach, and roughest nut were blossoms in the Spring; The news, and comes pell-mell And dances in the gloomy thicks with darksome anthem ing; Beneath the very burden We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, a thought for meek devotion, Tears of Phoebus, missings Have in us been found, and wise men find them still; And Narcissus loves himself in the selfish rill; Still is wet with morning; And the step that bled for thee, the rosy brier adorning. Oh! true things are fables, And the flowers are true things--yet no fables they; Fables were not more yore Yet they grew not, like the flowers, by every old pathway; Grossest hand can test us- Fools can prize us never Yet we rise, and rise, and rise-marvels sweet forever. Who shall say that flowers Dress not Heavens own bowers? Who its love, without us, can fancy,—or sweet floor? To say we sprang not there And came not down that love might bring one piece of Heaven the more? Oh pray believe that angels Brought us in their white laps down, 'twixt their golden *76* THE MILLER OF DEE. There dwelt a miller, hale and bold, Beside the river Dee; He worked and sang from morn till night, Forever used to be, "I envy nobody-no, not I, And nobody envies me." "Thou'rt wrong, my friend," said good king Hal; "As wrong as wrong can be; For could my heart be light as thine, I'd gladly change with thee: And tell me now, what makes thee sing, With voice so loud and free, While I am sad, though I'm the king, The miller smiled and doffed his cap, "I earn my bread," quoth he; "I love my wife, I love my friend, I love my children three; I owe no penny I can not pay; I thank the river Dee, That turns the mill that grinds the corn That feeds my babes and me." "Good friend," said Hal, and sighed the while, "Farewell, and happy be: But say no more, if thou'dst be true, That no one envies thee: Thy mealy cap is worth my crown; Thy mill, my kingdom's fee; Such men as thou are England's boast, O Miller of the Dee." Chas. Mackay 113 * 77 * ROBERT OF LINCOLN. Merrily swinging on briar and weed, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is this nest of ours, Robert of Lincoln is gaily dressed, Look, what a nice new coat is mine; Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Spink, spank, spink, Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Chee, chee, chee. Modest and shy as a nun is she; |