The Almighty will be thy babe's father,
Till Gregory come hame."...
"Haw" is an old English word meaning (?) blue or braw, and bayberry is the all-spice tree; so this sad one's yellow hair had for comb an uncommonly charming thing. In another version the comb is of "new silver," and in a third it is a red river kame, which, thinks Mr. Child, may be a corruption of red ivory. But give me (for such hair) the bayberry kind, and let it be haw.
[51]. "The Orphan."
"The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," wrote Richard Steele, "was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling, papa; for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, 'Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again.'"
[53].
The first and third stanzas of this poem were (and are) my particular favourites, and especially the second line in each. Such poems are like wayside pools, or little well-springs of water. It does not matter how many wayfarers come thither to quench their thirst, there is abundance for all.
"The Perishing Pleasures of Man." (line 18)
"But you mustn't imagine," said the old old Harper, "that I harp sad memories on my harp-strings because, being an ancient I am envious of my youth. Far from it. My only grief is that even if mine were the Harp that hung in Tara, I could not express the joy it is to be of years an hundred, and to remember that once I was nought—and all in the same bar."
And for yet another look behind, I cannot leave out this little rhyme from William Allingham, who made one of the happiest of all anthologies, "Nightingale Valley":