A FROST FANCY
Summer gone,
Winter here;
Ways are white,
Skies are clear.
And the sun
A ruddy boy
All day sliding,
While at night
The stars appear
Like skaters gliding
On a mere.
THE WORLD IS WIDE
The world is wide—around yon court,
Where dirty little children play,
Another world of street on street
Grows wide and wider every day.
And round the town for endless miles
A great strange land of green is spread—
O wide the world, O weary-wide,
But it is wider overhead.
For could you mount yon glittering stairs
And on their topmost turret stand,—
Still endless shining courts and squares,
And lanes of lamps on every hand.
And, might you tread those starry streets
To where those long perspectives bend,
O you would cast you down and die—
Street upon street, world without end.
SAINT CHARLES
'"Saint Charles," said Thackeray to me, thirty years ago, putting one of
Charles Lamb's letters to his forehead.'—LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD.
Saint Charles! ah yes, let other men
Love Elia for his antic pen,
And watch with dilettante eyes
His page for every quaint surprise,
Curious of caviare phrase.
Yea; these who will not also praise?
We surely must, but which is more
The motley that his sorrow wore,
Or the great heart whose valorous beat
Upheld his brave unfaltering feet
Along the narrow path he chose,
And followed faithful to the close?