Sweets for Leisure Hours / Amusing Tales for Little Readers

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See, see, what a sweet little prize I have found! A Robin that lay half-benumbed on the ground: Well hous’d and well fed, in your cage you will sing, And make our dull winter as gay as the spring. But stay,—sure ’tis cruel, with wings made to soar, To be shut up in prison, and never fly more— And I, who so often have long’d for a flight, Shall I keep you prisoner?—mamma, is that right? No, come, pretty Robin, I must set you free— For your whistle, though sweet, would sound sadly to me.
What a little thing am I! Hardly higher than the table; I can eat, and play, and cry, But to work I am not able.
Nothing in the world I know, But mamma will try and show me; Sweet mamma, I love her so, She’s so very kind unto me.
And she sets me on her knee Very often for some kisses: O! how good I’ll try to be, To such a dear mamma as this is!
Poor Susan was old and too feeble to spin, Her forehead was wrinkled, her hands they were thin; And she must have starv’d, as so many have done, If she had not been bless’d with a good little son.
He went every morning, as gay as a lark, And work’d all day long in the fields till ’twas dark, Then came home again to his dear mother’s cot, And joyfully gave her the wages he got.
Oh then, was not little Jem happier far Than naughty, and idle, and wicked boys are? For, as long as he liv’d, ’twas his comfort and joy, To think he’d not been an undutiful boy.
Whilst you are asleep, the poor little sweep At the dawning of morning must go, With brushes and bags, and cloth’d all in rags, In the winter, thro’ frost and thro’ snow.