rhyme, have disappeared from our poetry, and how our bank verse in the hands of the most popular writers has dropped its stiff Latinisms and all the awkward distortions resorted to by those who thought that by putting a sentence out of its proper shape they were writing like Milton.

I have now brought this brief survey of the progress of our poetry down to the present time, and refer the reader, for samples of it in the different stages of its existence, to those which are set before him ir this volume.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

SEPTEMBER, 1870.

These struggling tided of Life that seem

wayward aimless course to tend

Are eddies of the mighty stream

CHILD MEMORIAL LIBRARY

That rolls to its appointed and

William Cullen Bryanto

POEMS OF CHILDHOOD.

INFANCY.

PHILIP, MY KING.

"Who bears upon his baby brow the round
And top of sovereignty."

Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my king!

For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood's royal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand

With Love's invisible sceptre laden;
I am thine Esther, to command

Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my king!

O, the day when thou goest a-wooing,
Philip, my king!

When those beautiful lips 'gin suing,
And, some gentle heart's bars undoing,
Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there
Sittest love-glorified ! — Rule kindly,
Tenderly over thy kingdom fair;

I

For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,
Philip, my king!

gaze

from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow,
Philip, my king!

The spirit that there lies sleeping now
May rise like a giant, and make men bow
As to one Heaven-chosen amongst his peers.
My Saul, than thy brethren higher and fairer,
Let me behold thee in future years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my king;-

A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,
Philip, my king!

Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny, and cruel, and cold, and gray;

Rebels within thee and foes without

CRADLE SONG.

FROM BITTER-SWEET."

WHAT is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;

Unwritten history!

Unfathomed mystery!

Yet he chuckles, and crows, and nods, and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!

Warped by colic, and wet by tears,
Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears,
Our little nephew will lose two years;
And he'll never know

Where the summers go;
He need not laugh, for he 'll find it so.

Who can tell what a baby thinks?
Who can follow the gossamer links

By which the manikin feels his way
Out from the shore of the great unknown,
Blind, and wailing, and alone,

Into the light of day?

Out from the shore of the unknown sea,
Tossing in pitiful agony;

Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls,
Specked with the barks of little souls,
Barks that were launched on the other side,
And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide !
What does he think of his mother's eyes?
What does he think of his mother's hair?

What of the cradle-roof, that flies
Forward and backward through the air?
What does he think of his mother's breast,
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white,
Seeking it ever with fresh delight,

Cup of his life, and couch of his rest?
What does he think when her quick embrace
Presses his hand and buries his face
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell,

Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, With a tenderness she can never tell,

glorious,

Though she murmur the words

Of all the birds,

Words she has learned to murmur well ?
Now he thinks he'll go to sleep!

I can see the shadow creep