I wish I lived in a caravan
With a horse to drive, like a peddler-man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,
Or where he goes to, but on he goes!
His caravan has windows two,
And a chimney of tin, that the smoke comes through;
He has a wife, with a baby brown,
And they go riding from town to town.
Chairs to mend, and delf to sell!
He clashes the basins like a bell;
Tea-trays, baskets ranged in order,
Plates, with alphabets round the border!
The roads are brown, and the sea is green,
But his house is like a bathing-machine;
The world is round, and he can ride,
Rumble and slash, to the other side!
With the peddler-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook!
[321]
THE WONDERFUL WORLD
WILLIAM BRIGHTY RANDS
Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast—
World, you are beautifully dressed!
The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree—
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the top of the hills.
You friendly Earth, how far do you go,
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities and gardens and cliffs and isles,
And the people upon you for thousands of miles?
Ah! you are so great, and I am so small,
I hardly can think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
My mother kissed me, and said, quite gay,
"If the wonderful World is great to you,
And great to father and mother, too,
You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot!
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!"
[322]
Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton, 1809-1885), an English poet, wrote one poem that has held its own in children's collections. Its quiet mood of industry at one with the gentler influences of nature is especially appealing.
GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-MORNING
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES
A fair little girl sat under a tree,
Sewing as long as her eyes could see;
Then smoothed her work and folded it right
And said, "Dear work, good-night, good-night!"
Such a number of rooks came over her head,
Crying "Caw! Caw!" on their way to bed,
She said, as she watched their curious flight,
"Little black things, good-night, good-night!"
The horses neighed, and the oxen lowed,
The sheep's "Bleat! Bleat!" came over the road;
All seeming to say, with a quiet delight,
"Good little girl, good-night, good-night!"
She did not say to the sun, "Good-night!"
Though she saw him there like a ball of light;
For she knew he had God's time to keep
All over the world and never could sleep.
The tall pink foxglove bowed his head;
The violets curtsied, and went to bed;
And good little Lucy tied up her hair,
And said, on her knees, her favorite prayer.
And while on her pillow she softly lay,
She knew nothing more till again it was day;
And all things said to the beautiful sun,
"Good-morning, good-morning! our work is begun."