They took him so gently up out of his hutch,

  They made him a sick-bed, they loved him so much;

  They wrapped him up warm; they said, Poor thing, and such;

  But all to no purpose. Black Bunny he died,

  And rolled over limp on his little black side;

  The grown-up spectators looked awkward and sighed.

  While, as for those others in that congregation,

  You heard voices lifted in sore lamentation;

  But three-year-old Baby desired explanation:

  At least, so it seemed. Then they buried their dead

  In a nice quiet place, with a flag at his head;

  “Poor Bunny!” — in large print — was what the flag said.

  Now, as they were shovelling the earth in the hole,

  Little Baby burst out, “I don’t like it!” — poor soul!

  And bitterly wept. So the dead had his dole.

  That evening, as Babe she was cuddling to bed,

  “The Bunny will come back again,” Baby said,

  “And be a white bunny, and never be dead!”

  W. B. Rands.

  The Cow

  Thank you, pretty cow, that made

  Pleasant milk to soak my bread,

  Every day, and every night,

  Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white.

  Do not chew the hemlock rank,

  Growing on the weedy bank;

  But the yellow cowslips eat,

  They will make it very sweet.

  Where the purple violet grows,

  Where the bubbling water flows,

  Where the grass is fresh and fine,

  Pretty cow, go there and dine.

  Ann and Jane Taylor.

  The Skylark

  Bird of the wilderness,

  Blythesome and cumberless,

  Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!

  Emblem of happiness,

  Blest is thy dwelling-place —

  O to abide in the desert with thee!

  Wild is thy lay and loud

  Far in the downy cloud,

  Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.

  Where, on thy dewy wing,

  Where art thou journeying?

  Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

  O’er fell and fountain sheen,

  O’er moor and mountain green,

  O’er the red streamer that heralds the day,

  Over the cloudlet dim,

  Over the rainbow’s rim,

  Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

  Then, when the gloaming comes,

  Low in the heather blooms,

  Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!

  Emblem of happiness,

  Blest is thy dwelling-place —

  O to abide in the desert with thee!

  James Hogg.

  CHRISTMAS POEMS

  Here one would like to have begun with some of the old-time carols. But carols, somehow, seem to demand certain accompaniments — snow and frost, starlight and lantern-light, a mingling of Church bells, and above all their own simple haunting music. In cold print they do not appeal to us to the same extent. But the poems that follow are in the true carol-spirit.

  Christmas Eve

  In holly hedges starving birds

  Silently mourn the setting year;

  Upright like silver-plated swords

  The flags stand in the frozen mere.

  The mistletoe we still adore

  Upon the twisted hawthorn grows:

  In antique gardens hellebore

  Puts forth its blushing Christmas rose.

  Shrivell’d and purple, cheek by jowl,

  The hips and haws hang drearily;

  Roll’d in a ball the sulky owl

  Creeps far into his hollow tree.

  In abbeys and cathedrals dim

  The birth of Christ is acted o’er;

  The kings of Cologne worship him,

  Balthazar, Jasper, Melchior.

  The shepherds in the field at night

  Beheld an angel glory-clad,

  And shrank away with sore affright.

  “Be not afraid,” the angel bade.

  “I bring good news to king and clown,

  To you here crouching on the sward;

  For there is born in David’s town

  A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

  “Behold the babe is swathed, and laid

  Within a manger.” Straight there stood

  Beside the angel all arrayed

  A heavenly multitude.

  “Glory to God,” they sang; “and peace,

  Good pleasure among men.”

  The wondrous message of release!

  Glory to God again!

  Hush! Hark! the waits, far up the street!

  A distant, ghostly charm unfolds,

  Of magic music wild and sweet,

  Anomes and clarigolds.

  John Davidson.

  A Christmas Carol

  What sweeter music can we bring

  Than a carol, for to sing

  The birth of this our heavenly King?

  Awake the voice! awake the string!

  Heart, ear, and eye, and everything!

  Dark and dull night, fly hence away,

  And give the honour to this day,

  That sees December turned to May.

  If we may ask the reason, say,

  The why and wherefore all things here

  Seem like the spring-time of the year?

  Why does the chilling winter’s morn

  Smile, like a field beset with corn?

  Or smell, like to a mead new-shorn,

  Thus, on the sudden?

  Come and see

  The cause, why things thus fragrant be.

  ’Tis He is born, whose quickening birth

  Gives light and lustre, public mirth,

  To heaven, and the under-earth.

  We see Him come, and know Him ours,

  Who with His sunshine and His showers

  Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

  The darling of the world is come,

  And fit it is we find a room

  To welcome Him. The nobler part

  Of all the house here, is the heart,

  Which we will give Him; and bequeath

  This holly, and this ivy wreath,

  To do Him honour; who’s our King,

  And Lord of all this revelling.

  Robert Herrick.

  A Child’s Present to His Child-Saviour

  Go, pretty child, and bear this flower

  Unto thy little Saviour;

  And tell Him, by that bud now blown,

  He is the Rose of Sharon known;

  When thou hast said so, stick it there

  Upon his bib, or stomacher;

  And tell Him, for good handsel too,

  That thou hast brought a whistle new,

  Made of a clean straight oaten reed,

  To charm his cries at time of need.

  Tell Him, for coral thou hast none;

  But if thou hadst, He should have one;

  But poor thou art, and known to be

  Even as moneyless, as He.

  Lastly, if thou canst win a kiss

  From those mellifluous lips of His,

  Then never take a second on,

  To spoil the first impression.

  Robert Herrick.

  The Peace-Giver

  Thou whose birth on earth

  Angels sang to men,

  While thy stars made mirth,

  Saviour, at thy birth.

  This day born again;

  As this night was bright

  With thy cradle-ray,

  Very light of light,

  Turn the wild world’s night

  To thy perfect day.

  Thou the Word and Lord

  In all time and space

  Heard, beheld, adored,

  With all ages poured

  Forth before thy face,

  Lord, what worth in earth

  Drew thee down to die?

  What therein was worth,

  Lord, thy death and birth?

  What beneath thy sky?

  Thou whose face gives grace

  As the sun’s doth heat,

  Let thy sunbright face

  Lighten time and space

  Here beneath thy feet.

  Bid our peace increase,

  Thou that madest morn;

  Bid oppression cease;

  Bid the night be peace;

  Bid the day be born.

  A. C. Swinburne.

  VARIOUS

  To a Singer

  My soul is an enchanted boat,

  Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float

  Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;

  And thine doth like an angel sit

  Beside the helm conducting it,

  Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.

  It seems to float ever, for ever,

  Upon that many-winding river,

  Between mountains, woods, abysses,

  A paradise of wildernesses!

  Till, like one in slumber bound,

  Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,

  Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.

  Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions

  In music’s most serene dominions;

  Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.

  And we sail on, away, afar,

  Without a course, without a star,

  But by the instinct of sweet music driven;

  Till through Elysian garden islets

  By thee, most beautiful of pilots,

  Where never mortal pinnace glided,

  The boat of my desire is guided:

  Realms where the air we breathe is love,

  Which in the winds on the waves doth move,

  Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

  P. B. Shelley.

  The Happy Piper

  Piping down the valleys wild,

  Piping songs of pleasant glee,

  On a cloud I saw a child,

  And he laughing said to me:

  “Pipe a song about a Lamb!”

  So I piped with merry cheer.

  “Piper, pipe that song again”;

  So I piped: he wept to hear.

  “Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

  Sing thy songs of happy cheer!”

  So I sang the same again,

  While he wept with joy to hear.

  “Piper, sit thee down and write

  In a book that all may read.”

  So he vanish’d from my sight,

  And I pluck’d a hollow reed,

  And I made a rural pen,

  And I stain’d the water clear,

  And I wrote my happy songs

  Every child may joy to hear.

  William Blake.

  The Destruction of Sennacherib

  The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,

  And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

  And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

  When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

  Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

  That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

  Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

  That host on the morrow lay wither’d and strown.

  For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

  And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

  And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

  And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

  And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

  But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride:

  And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

  And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

  And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

  With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;

  And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

  The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

  And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

  And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

  And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

  Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

  Lord Byron.

  The next two spirited poems — both hailing from America — are inserted with a view to their being useful to boys who have a taste for recitation.

  Sheridan’s Ride

  Up from the south at break of day,

  Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,

  The affrighted air with a shudder bore,

  Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain’s door,

  The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,

  Telling the battle was on once more —

  And Sheridan twenty miles away!

  And wilder still those billows of war

  Thundered along the horizon’s bar;

  And louder yet into Winchester rolled

  The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,

  Making the blood of the listener cold

  As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,

  With Sheridan twenty miles away!

  But there is a road from Winchester town,

  A good broad highway leading down;

  And there, through the flash of the morning light,

  A steed, as black as the steeds of night,

  Was seen to pass as with eagle flight.

  As if he knew the terrible need,

  He stretched away with his utmost speed;

  Hills rose and fell, but his heart was gay,

  With Sheridan fifteen miles away!

  Still sprang from those swift hoofs, thundering south,

  The dust, like the smoke from the cannon’s mouth,

  Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster,

  Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster;

  The heart of the steed and the heart of the master

  Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,

  Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;

  Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,

  With Sheridan only ten miles away!

  The first that the General saw was the groups

  Of stragglers, and then — the retreating troops!

  What was done — what to do — a glance told him both;

  And, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath

  He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzahs,

  And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because

  The sight of the Master compelled it to pause.

  With foam and with dust the black charger was grey;

  By the flash of his eye and his red nostril’s play

  He seemed to the whole great army to say

  “I have brought you Sheridan, all the way

  From Winchester town to save the day!”

  Hurrah, hurrah, for Sheridan!

  Hurrah, hurrah, for horse and man!

  And when their statues are placed on high

  Under the dome of the Union sky

  — The American soldier’s Temple of Fame —

  There, with the glorious General’s name,

  Be it said in letters both bold and bright,

  “Here is the steed that saved the day

  By carrying Sheridan into the fight,

  From Winchester — twenty miles away!”

  Thomas Buchanan Read.

  Columbus

  Behind him lay the gray Azores,

  Behind, the Gates of Hercules;

  Before him not the ghost of shores;

  Before him only shoreless seas.

  The good mate said: “Now must we pray,

  For lo! the very stars are gone.

  Brave Admiral, speak; what shall I say?”

  “Why, say ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

  “My men grow mutinous day by day;

  My men grow ghastly, wan and weak.”

  The stout mate thought of home; a spray

  Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.

  “What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,

  If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”

  “Why, you shall say at break of day:

  ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”

  They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,

  Until at last the blanched mate said:

  “Why, now not even God would know

  Should I and all my men fall dead.

  These very winds forget their way,

  For God from these dread seas is gone.

  Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say—”

  He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”

  They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:

  “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.

  He curls his lip, he lies in wait,

  He lifts his teeth as if to bite!

  Brave Admiral, say but one good word:

  What shall we do when hope is gone?”

  The words leapt like a leaping sword:

  “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”

  Then, pale and worn, he paced his deck,

  And peered through darkness. Ah, that night

  Of all dark nights! And then a speck —

  A light! A light! At last a light!

  It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!

  It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.

  He gained a world; he gave that world

  Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

  Joaquin Miller.

  Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” of which this is the first, deal only with the legends that Rome in her greatness liked to tell concerning her early beginnings. Unfortunately there is no similar group of poems treating of Imperial Rome, the centre of a world-empire; but children must please not think of the Mistress of the World purely as a little riverside town which could free itself from outside trouble by chopping down a wooden bridge.

  Horatius

  Lars Porsena of Clusium

  By the Nine Gods he swore

  That the great house of Tarquin

  Should suffer wrong no more.