Where did you get those arms and hands? Feet, whence did you come, you darling things? From the same box as the cherubs' wings. How did they all just come to be you? But how did you come to us, you dear? GEORGE MACDONALD. I' TO A CHILD. F by any device or knowledge The rosebud its beauty could know, It would stay a rosebud for ever, Nor into its fulness grow. And if thou could'st know thy own sweetness, O little one, perfect and sweet, Thou would'st be a child for ever, Completer whilst incomplete. FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE. H PARIS A MACON. SAW, I saw the lovely child, I learnt her gestures sweet and wild, Her name?-I heard not, nay, nor care, Enough it was for me To find her innocently fair And delicately free. Oh cease and go ere dreams be done, Nor trace the angel's birth, Nor find the paradisal one A blossom of the earth! Thus it is with our subtlest joys,— It comes unbidden, comes unbought, His swiftest and his sweetest thought Can never poet say. FREDERICK MYERS. UNREFLECTING CHILDHOOD. MT is, indeed, a little while Since you were born, my happy pet; Your future beckons with a smile, Your bygones don't exist as yet. Is all the world with beauty rife? The ocean, and the waning moons, Festa and song, and frolic wit, And banter, and domestic mirth,They all are ours!-dear child, is it A pleasant earth? |