Songs for a Little House | Page 4

snow?Golden the train windows go.
Then (how long it seems) at last?All the way is overpast.?Heart that beats your muffled drum,?Lo, your venturer is come!?Wide the door! Leap high, O fire!?Home at length is heart's desire!?Gone is weariness and fret,?At the sill warm lips are met.?Once again may be renewed?The conjoined beatitude.
READING ALOUD
Once we read Tennyson aloud?In our great fireside chair;?Between the lines, my lips could touch?Her April-scented hair.
How very fond I was, to think?The printed poems fair,?When close within my arms I held?A living lyric there!
THE MOON-SHEEP
The moon seems like a docile sheep,?She pastures while all people sleep;?But sometimes, when she goes astray,?She wanders all alone by day.
Up in the clear blue morning air?We are surprised to see her there,?Grazing in her woolly white,?Waiting the return of night.
When dusk lets down the meadow bars?She greets again her lambs, the stars!
MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN
I like the Chinese laundryman:?He smokes a pipe that bubbles,?And seems, as far as I can tell,?A man with but few troubles.?He has much to do, no doubt,?But also, much to think about.
Most men (for instance I myself)?Are spending, at all times,?All our hard-earned quarters,?Our nickels and our dimes:?With Mar Quong it's the other way--?He takes in small change every day.
Next time you call for collars?In his steamy little shop,?Observe how tight his pigtail?Is coiled and piled on top.?But late at night he lets it hang?And thinks of the Yang-tse-kiang.
THE MILKMAN
Early in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs,?You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horse's hoofs; You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away: You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day!
The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart-- I'd rather be the dairy _man_ and drive a little cart,?And bustle round the village in the early morning blue, And hang my reins upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do.
IN HONOUR OF TAFFY TOPAZ
Taffy, the topaz-coloured cat,?Thinks now of this and now of that,?But chiefly of his meals.?Asparagus, and cream, and fish,?Are objects of his Freudian wish;?What you don't give, he steals.
His gallant heart is strongly stirred?By clink of plate or flight of bird,?He has a plumy tail;?At night he treads on stealthy pad?As merry as Sir Galahad?A-seeking of the Grail.
His amiable amber eyes?Are very friendly, very wise;?Like Buddha, grave and fat,?He sits, regardless of applause,?And thinking, as he kneads his paws,?What fun to be a cat!
THE CEDAR CHEST
Her mind is like her cedar chest?Wherein in quietness do rest?The wistful dreamings of her heart?In fragrant folds all laid apart.
There, put away in sprigs of rhyme?Until her life's full blossom-time,?Flutter (like tremulous little birds)?Her small and sweet maternal words.
O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY
O praise me not the country--?The meadows green and cool,?The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool!?The city for my craving,?Her lordship and her slaving,?The hot stones of her paving?For me, a city fool!
O praise me not the leisure?Of gardened country seats,?The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats-- The city for my yearning,?My spending and my earning.?Her winding ways for learning,?Sing hey! the city streets!
O praise me not the country,?Her sycamores and bees,?I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees!?The city for my wooing,?My dreaming and my doing;?Her beauty for pursuing,?Her deathless mysteries.
O praise me not the country,?Her evenings full of stars,?Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars-- The city for my wonder,?Her glory and her blunder,?And O the haunting thunder?Of the Elevated cars!
ANIMAL CRACKERS
Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink,?That is the finest of suppers, I think;?When I'm grown up and can have what I please?I think I shall always insist upon these.
What do _you_ choose when you're offered a treat??When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"?Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast??It's cocoa and animals that _I_ love most!
The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know:?The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,?And there in the twilight, how jolly to see?The cocoa and animals waiting for me.
Daddy and Mother dine later in state,?With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;?But they don't have nearly as much fun as I?Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;?And Daddy once said, he would like to be me?Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!
THE WAKEFUL HUSBAND
How blue the moonlight and how still the night.?Silent I ramble through the whole dear house?Setting aright in happy ownership?Whatever may lie out of its due place.?Books in the living room I rearrange,?Then in the dining room my pewter mugs,?And put her little brown nasturtium bowl?Where she can see it when she telephones.?Up in my den the papers are a-sprawl?And litter up my desk: these too I sort?Thinking, to-morrow I will rise betimes?And do my work neglected.... Tiptoe then?I pass into the Shrine. She is asleep,?Dark