Children

when the world is puddle-wonderful

in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always— Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.

I am Rose my eyes are blue I am Rose and who are you I am Rose and when I sing I am Rose like anything.

No man has ever lived that had enough Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving?

I often think it’s comical How nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That’s born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative!

Pretty young wards in Chancery.

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; And when she was good She was very, very good, But when she was bad she was horrid.

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair.

I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet.

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.

From the waterfall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

Child, you are like a flower, So sweet and pure and fair. I look at you, and sadness Touches me with a prayer.

A mother’s pride, a father’s joy.

When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee; And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me.

Love is a boy by poets styled; Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy! My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.