Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes | Page 9

himself.
THE LITTLE OLD CUPID
'Twas a very small garden;?The paths were of stone,?Scattered with leaves,?With moss overgrown;?And a little old Cupid?Stood under a tree,?With a small broken bow?He stood aiming at me.
The dog-rose in briars?Hung over the weeds,?The air was aflock?With the floating of seed,?And a little old Cupid?Stood under a tree,?With a small broken bow?He stood aiming at me.
The dovecote was tumbling,?The fountain dry,?A wind in the orchard?Went whispering by;?And a little old Cupid?Stood under a tree,?With a small broken bow?He stood aiming at me.
KING DAVID
King David was a sorrowful man:?No cause for his sorrow had he;?And he called for the music of a hundred harps,?To ease his melancholy.
They played till they all fell silent:?Played-and play sweet did they;?But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David?They could not charm away.
He rose; and in his garden?Walked by the moon alone,?A nightingale hidden in a cypress-tree?Jargoned on and on.
King David lifted his sad eyes?Into the dark-boughed tree-?''Tell me, thou little bird that singest,?Who taught my grief to thee?'
But the bird in no wise heeded?And the king in the cool of the moon?Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness,?Till all his own was gone.
THE OLD HOUSE
A very, very old house I knowAnd?ever so many people go,?Past the small lodge, forlorn and still,?Under the heavy branches, till?Comes the blank wall, and there's the door.?Go in they do; come out no more.?No voice says aught; no spark of light?Across that threshold cheers the sight;?Only the evening star on high?Less lonely makes a lonely sky,?As, one by one, the people go?Into that very old house I know.
BEASTS
UNSTOOPING
Low on his fours the Lion?Treads with the surly Bear',?But Men straight upward from the dust?Walk with their heads in air;?The free sweet winds of heaven,?The sunlight from on high?Beat on their clear bright cheeks and brows?As they go striding by;?The doors of all their houses?They arch so they may go,?Uplifted o'er the four-foot beasts,?Unstooping, to and fro.
ALL BUT BLIND
All but blind
In his cambered hole?Gropes for worms
The four-clawed Mole.
All but blind
In the evening sky?The hooded Bat
Twirls softly by.
All but blind
In the burning day?The Barn-Owl blunders
On her way.
And blind as are
These three to me,?So blind to someone
I must be.
NICHOLAS NYE
Thistle and darnell and dock grew there,
And a bush, in the corner, of may,?On the orchard wall I used to sprawl
In the blazing heat of the day;?Half asleep and half awake,
While the birds went twittering by,?And nobody there my lone to share
But Nicholas Nye.
Nicholas Nye was lean and gray,
Lame of leg and old,?More than a score of donkey's years
He had been since he was foaled;?He munched the thistles, purple and spiked,
Would sometimes stoop and sigh,?And turn to his head, as if he said,
"Poor Nicholas Nye!"
Alone with his shadow he'd drowse in the meadow,
Lazily swinging his tail,?At break of day he used to bray,--
Not much too hearty and hale;?But a wonderful gumption was under his skin,
And a clean calm light in his eye,?And once in a while; he'd smile:--
Would Nicholas Nye.
Seem to be smiling at me, he would,
From his bush in the corner, of may,--?Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn,
Knobble-kneed, lonely and gray;?And over the grass would seem to pass
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,?Something much better than words between me
And Nicholas Nye.
But dusk would come in the apple boughs,
The green of the glow-worm shine,?The birds in nest would crouch to rest,
And home I'd trudge to mine;?And there, in the moonlight, dark with dew,
Asking not wherefore nor why,?Would brood like a ghost, and as still as a post,
Old Nicholas Nye.
THE PIGS AND THE CHARCOAL - BURNER
The old Pig said to the little pigs,
'In the forest is truffles and mast,?Follow me then, all ye little pigs,
Follow me fast!'
The Charcoal-burner sat in the shade
With his chin on his thumb,?And saw the big Pig and the little pigs,
Chuffling come.
He watched 'neath a green and giant bough,
And the pigs in the ground?Made a wonderful grizzling and gruzzling
And a greedy sound.
And when, full-fed they were gone, and Night
Walked her starry ways,?He stared with his cheeks in his hands
At his sullen blaze.
FIVE EYES
In Hans' old Mill his three black cats?Watch the bins for the thieving rats.?Whisker and claw, they crouch in the night,?Their five eyes smouldering green and bright:?Squeaks from the flour sacks, squeaks from where?The cold wind stirs on the empty stair,?Squeaking and scampering, everywhere.?Then down they pounce, now in, now out,?At whisking tail, and sniffing snout;?While lean old Hans he snores away?Till peep of light at break of day;?Then up he climbs to his creaking mill,?Out come his cats all grey with meal --?Jekkel, and Jessup, and one-eyed Jill.
GRIM
Beside the blaze of forty fires
Giant Grim doth sit,?Roasting a thick-woolled mountain sheep
Upon an iron spit.?Above him wheels the winter sky,
Beneath him, fathoms deep,?Lies hidden in the valley mists
A village fast asleep ---?Save for one restive hungry dog
That, snuffing towards the height,?Smells Grim's broiled supper-meat, and spies?His