Country Sentiment | Page 9

But may the gift of heavenly peace
And glory for all time
Keep the
boy Tom who tending geese
First made the nursery rhyme.
By the brookside one August day,
Using the sun for clock,
Tom
whiled the languid hours away
Beside his scattering flock.
Carving with a sharp pointed stone
On a broad slab of slate
The
famous lives of Jumping Joan,
Dan Fox and Greedy Kate.
Rhyming of wolves and bears and birds,
Spain, Scotland, Babylon,

That sister Kate might learn the words
To tell to toddling John.
But Kate who could not stay content
To learn her lesson pat
New
beauty to the rough lines lent
By changing this or that.
And she herself set fresh things down
In corners of her slate,
Of
lambs and lanes and London town.
God's blessing fall on Kate!
The baby loved the simple sound,
With jolly glee he shook,
And
soon the lines grew smooth and round
Like pebbles in Tom's brook.

From mouth to mouth told and retold
By children sprawled at ease,

Before the fire in winter's cold,
in June, beneath tall trees.
Till though long lost are stone and slate,
Though the brook no more
runs,
And dead long time are Tom, John, Kate,
Their sons and their
sons' sons.
Yet as when Time with stealthy tread
Lays the rich garden waste

The woodland berry ripe and red
Fails not in scent or taste,
So these same rhymes shall still be told
To children yet unborn,

While false philosophy growing old
Fades and is killed by scorn.
JANE.
As Jane walked out below the hill,
She saw an old man standing still,

His eyes in tranced sorrow bound
On the broad stretch of barren
ground.
His limbs were knarled like aged trees,
His thin beard wrapt about his
knees,
His visage broad and parchment white,
Aglint with pale
reflected light.
He seemed a creature fall'n afar
From some dim planet or faint star.

Jane scanned him very close, and soon
Cried, "'Tis the old man from
the moon."
He raised his voice, a grating creak,
But only to himself would speak.

Groaning with tears in piteous pain,
"O! O! would I were home
again."
Then Jane ran off, quick as she could,
To cheer his heart with drink
and food.
But ah, too late came ale and bread,
She found the poor
soul stretched stone-dead.
And a new moon rode overhead.
VAIN AND CARELESS.

Lady, lovely lady,
Careless and gay!
Once when a beggar called

She gave her child away.
The beggar took the baby,
Wrapped it in a shawl,
"Bring her back,"
the lady said,
"Next time you call."
Hard by lived a vain man,
So vain and so proud,
He walked on stilts

To be seen by the crowd.
Up above the chimney pots,
Tall as a mast,
And all the people ran
about
Shouting till he passed.
"A splendid match surely,"
Neighbours saw it plain,
"Although she
is so careless,
Although he is so vain."
But the lady played bobcherry,
Did not see or care,
As the vain man
went by her
Aloft in the air.
This gentle-born couple
Lived and died apart.
Water will not mix
with oil,
Nor vain with careless heart.
NINE O'CLOCK.
I.
Nine of the clock, oh!
Wake my lazy head!
Your shoes of red
morocco,
Your silk bed-gown:
Rouse, rouse, speck-eyed Mary
In
your high bed!
A yawn, a smile, sleepy-starey,
Mary climbs down.

"Good-morning to my brothers,
Good-day to the Sun,
Halloo,
halloo to the lily-white sheep
That up the mountain run."
II.
Good-night to the meadow, farewell to the nine o'clock Sun, "He loves
me not, loves me, he loves me not" (O jealous one!) "He loves me, he
loves me not, loves me"--O soft nights of June, A bird sang for love on

the cherry-bough: up swam the Moon.
THE PICTURE BOOK.
When I was not quite five years old
I first saw the blue picture book,

And Fraulein Spitzenburger told
Stories that sent me hot and cold;

I loathed it, yet I had to look:
It was a German book.
I smiled at first, for she'd begun
With a back-garden broad and green,

And rabbits nibbling there: page one
Turned; and the gardener
fired his gun
From the low hedge: he lay unseen
Behind: oh, it was
mean!
They're hurt, they can't escape, and so
He stuffs them head-down in a
sack,
Not quite dead, wriggling in a row,
And Fraulein laughed,
"Ho, ho! Ho, ho!"
And gave my middle a hard smack,
I wish that
I'd hit back.
Then when I cried she laughed again;
On the next page was a dead
boy
Murdered by robbers in a lane;
His clothes were red with a big
stain
Of blood, he held a broken toy,
The poor, poor little boy!
I had to look: there was a town
Burning where every one got caught,

Then a fish pulled a nigger down
Into the lake and made him
drown,
And a man killed his friend; they fought
For money,
Fraulein thought.
Old Fraulein laughed, a horrid noise.
"Ho, ho!" Then she explained it
all
How robbers kill the little boys
And torture them and break their
toys.
Robbers are always big and tall:
I cried: I was so small.
How a man often kills his wife,
How every one dies in the end
By
fire, or water or a knife.
If you're not careful in this life,
Even if you
can trust your