NURSING
XXII
O hush, my little baby brother!
Sleep, my love, upon my knee,
What though, dear child, we’ve lost our mother?
That can never trouble thee.
You are but ten weeks old to-morrow;
What can you know of our loss?
The house is full enough of sorrow;
Little baby, don’t be cross.
Peace, cry not so, my dearest love!
Hush, my baby bird, lie still,—
He’s quiet now, he does not move,
Fast asleep is little Will.
My only solace, only joy,
Since the sad day I lost my mother,
Is nursing her own Willy boy,
My little orphan brother.
THE ROOK
AND
THE SPARROWS
XXIII
A little boy with crumbs of bread
Many a hungry sparrow fed.
It was a child of little sense
Who this kind bounty did dispense;
For suddenly ’twas from them torn,
And all the birds were left forlorn
In a hard time of frost and snow,
Not knowing where for food to go.
He would no longer give them bread,
Because he had observed, he said,
A great black bird, a rook by name,
That sometimes to the window came
And took away a small bird’s share.
So foolish Henry did not care
What became of the great rook
That from the little sparrows took,
Now and then, as ’twere by stealth,
A part of their abundant wealth;
Nor ever more would feed his sparrows.
Thus ignorance a kind heart narrows.
I wish I had been there, I would
Have told the child, rooks live by food
In the same way the sparrows do.
I also would have told him too
Birds act by instinct, and ne’er can
Attain the rectitude of man.
Nay, that even when distress
Does on poor human nature press,
We need not be too strict in seeing
The failings of a fellow-being.
FEIGNED
COURAGE
XXIV
Horatio, of ideal courage vain,
Was flourishing in air his father’s cane,
And, as the fumes of valour swell’d his pate,
Now thought himself this hero, and now that:
“And now,” he cried, “I will Achilles be;
My sword I brandish; see, the Trojans flee!
Now I’ll be Hector, when his angry blade
A lane through heaps of slaughter’d Grecians made!
And now my deeds, still, braver I’ll evince,
I am no less than Edward the Black Prince.
Give way, ye coward French!” As thus he spoke,
And aim’d in fancy a sufficient stroke
To fix the fate of Crecy or Poictiers
(The Muse relates the Hero’s fate with tears),
He struck his milk-white hand against a nail,
Sees his own blood, and feels his courage fail.
Ah! where is now that boasted valour flown,
That in the tented field so late was shown?
Achilles weeps, great Hector hangs his head,
And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed.
