Two burning lamps, two underneath his wings:
Whose shining rayes serve oft, in darkest night,
Th' imbroderer's hand in royall works to light:
Th' ingenious turner, with a wakefull eye,
To polish fair his purest ivory:
The usurer to count his glistring treasures:
The learned scribe to limn his golden measures."
"There is a kind of little animal of the size of prawnes," says Champlain of these tiny winged things, "which fly by night, and make such light in the air that one would say that they were so many little candles. If a man had three or four of these little creatures, which are not larger than a filbert, he could read as well at night as with a wax light."
[95]. "The Sale of the Pet Lamb."
"The Pet Lamb" by William Wordsworth is certainly of a more delicate light and colour and music than this poem. But it is much better known. And there is a secret something in the words of Mary Howitt's that wins one at once to love the writer of it.