II

TO MY MOTHER

YOU too, my mother, read my rhymes

You

For love of unforgotten times,

And you may chance to hear once more The little feet along the floor.

III

TO AUNTIE

CHIEF of our aunts—not only I,

CHIE

But all your dozen of nurselings cry--

What did the other children do?

And what were childhood, wanting you?

IV

TO MINNIE

HE red room with the giant bed

THE

Where none but elders laid their head;

The little room where you and I

Did for awhile together lie

And, simple suitor, I your hand
In decent marriage did demand;
The great day nursery, best of all,
With pictures pasted on the wall
And leaves upon the blind-
A pleasant room wherein to wake
And hear the leafy garden shake
And rustle in the wind-

And pleasant there to lie in bed

And see the pictures overhead—

The wars about Sebastopol,

The grinning guns along the wall,

The daring escalade,

The plunging ships, the bleating sheep,

The happy children ankle-deep

And laughing as they wade:

TO MINNIE

All these are vanished clean away,

And the old manse is changed to-day;
It wears an altered face

And shields a stranger race.

The river, on from mill to mill,

Flows past our childhood's garden still;
But ah! we children never more
Shall watch it from the water-door!
Below the yew-it still is there-
Our phantom voices haunt the air
As we were still at play,

And I can hear them call and say: 'How far is it to Babylon?'

Ah, far enough, my dear,
Far, far enough from here—

Yet you have farther gone!
"Can I get there by candlelight?'
So goes the old refrain.

I do not know-perchance you might—

But only, children, hear it right,

Ah, never to return again!

The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,

Shall break on hill and plain,

And put all stars and candles out,
Ere we be young again.

H

97

To you in distant India, these

I send across the seas,

Nor count it far across.

For which of us forgets

The Indian cabinets,

The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross, The pied and painted birds and beans,

The junks and bangles, beads and screens,

The gods and sacred bells,

And the loud-humming, twisted shells?

The level of the parlour floor

Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;
But when we climbed upon a chair,
Behold the gorgeous East was there!
Be this a fable; and behold
Me in the parlour as of old,

And Minnie just above me set
In the quaint Indian cabinet !
Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
Too high for me to reach myself.

Reach down a hand, my dear, and take

These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake!