ENVOY FOR "A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES"
WHETHER upon the garden seat You lounge with your uplifted feet Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;Or whether on the sofa you, No grown up person being by, Do some soft corner occupy;Take you this volume in your hands And enter into other lands, For lo! (as children feign) suppose You, hunting in the garden rows, Or in the lumbered attic, or The cellar - a nail-studded door And dark, descending stairway found That led to kingdoms underground:
There standing, you should hear with ease Strange birds a-singing, or the trees Swing in big robber woods, or bells On many fairy citadels:
There passing through (a step or so -
Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)
From your nice nurseries you would pass, Like Alice through the Looking-Glass Or Gerda following Little Ray, To wondrous countries far away.
Well, and just so this volume can Transport each little maid or man Presto from where they live away Where other children used to play.
As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see if you but look Through the windows of this book Another child far, far away And in another garden play.
But do not think you can at all, By knocking on the window, call That child to hear you. He intent Is still on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look, Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For long ago, the truth to say, He has grown up and gone away;And it is but a child of air That lingers in the garden there.
FOR RICHMOND'S GARDEN WALL
WHEN Thomas set this tablet here, Time laughed at the vain chanticleer;And ere the moss had dimmed the stone, Time had defaced that garrison.
Now I in turn keep watch and ward In my red house, in my walled yard Of sunflowers, sitting here at ease With friends and my bright canvases.
But hark, and you may hear quite plain Time's chuckled laughter in the lane.
HAIL, GUEST, AND ENTER FREELY!
HAIL, guest, and enter freely! All you see Is, for your momentary visit, yours; and we Who welcome you are but the guests of God, And know not our departure.
LO, NOW, MY GUEST
LO, now, my guest, if aught amiss were said, Forgive it and dismiss it from your head.
For me, for you, for all, to close the date, Pass now the ev'ning sponge across the slate;And to that spirit of forgiveness keep Which is the parent and the child of sleep.
SO LIVE, SO LOVE, SO USE THAT FRAGILE HOURSO live, so love, so use that fragile hour, That when the dark hand of the shining power Shall one from other, wife or husband, take, The poor survivor may not weep and wake.
AD SE IPSUM
DEAR sir, good-morrow! Five years back, When you first girded for this arduous track, And under various whimsical pretexts Endowed another with your damned defects, Could you have dreamed in your despondent vein That the kind God would make your path so plain?
Non nobis, domine! O, may He still Support my stumbling footsteps on the hill!
BEFORE THIS LITTLE GIFT WAS COME
BEFORE this little gift was come The little owner had made haste for home;And from the door of where the eternal dwell, Looked back on human things and smiled farewell.
O may this grief remain the only one!
O may our house be still a garrison Of smiling children, and for evermore The tune of little feet be heard along the floor!
GO, LITTLE BOOK - THE ANCIENT PHRASE
GO, little book - the ancient phrase And still the daintiest - go your ways, My Otto, over sea and land, Till you shall come to Nelly's hand.
How shall I your Nelly know?
By her blue eyes and her black brow, By her fierce and slender look, And by her goodness, little book!
What shall I say when I come there?
You shall speak her soft and fair:
See - you shall say - the love they send To greet their unforgotten friend!
Giant Adulpho you shall sing The next, and then the cradled king:
And the four corners of the roof Then kindly bless; and to your perch aloof, Where Balzac all in yellow dressed And the dear Webster of the west Encircle the prepotent throne Of Shakespeare and of Calderon, Shall climb an upstart.
There with these You shall give ear to breaking seas And windmills turning in the breeze, A distant undetermined din Without; and you shall hear within The blazing and the bickering logs, The crowing child, the yawning dogs, And ever agile, high and low, Our Nelly going to and fro.
There shall you all silent sit, Till, when perchance the lamp is lit And the day's labour done, she takes Poor Otto down, and, warming for our sakes, Perchance beholds, alive and near, Our distant faces reappear.
MY LOVE WAS WARM
MY love was warm; for that I crossed The mountains and the sea, Nor counted that endeavour lost That gave my love to me.
If that indeed were love at all, As still, my love, I trow, By what dear name am I to call The bond that holds me now DEDICATORY POEM FOR "UNDERWOODS"TO her, for I must still regard her As feminine in her degree, Who has been my unkind bombarder Year after year, in grief and glee, Year after year, with oaken tree;And yet betweenwhiles my laudator In terms astonishing to me -To the Right Reverend The Spectator I here, a humble dedicator, Bring the last apples from my tree.
In tones of love, in tones of warning, She hailed me through my brief career;And kiss and buffet, night and morning, Told me my grandmamma was near;Whether she praised me high and clear Through her unrivalled circulation, Or, sanctimonious insincere, She damned me with a misquotation -A chequered but a sweet relation, Say, was it not, my granny dear?
Believe me, granny, altogether Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
Oft have you spruced my wounded feather, Oft brought a light into my eyes -For notice still the writer cries.
In any civil age or nation, The book that is not talked of dies.
So that shall be my termination:
Whether in praise or execration, Still, if you love me, criticise!
FAREWELL
FAREWELL, and when forth I through the Golden Gates to Golden Isles Steer without smiling, through the sea of smiles, Isle upon isle, in the seas of the south, Isle upon island, sea upon sea, Why should I sail, why should the breeze?