THE SICK CHILD

This delightful and dearly-beloved author was often ill in childhood. He remembers in this touching poem what a feverish child thinks and fears, and how strange a sense there is of things too near and things too far. How lovely are the lines spoken by the mother about "the birds and the hills of sheep "!

CHILD

O MOTHER, lay your hand on my brow!
O, mother, mother, where am I now?
Why is the room so gaunt and great?
Why am I lying awake so late?

MOTHER

Fear not at all; the night is still,
Nothing is here that means you ill.
Nothing but lamps the whole town through,
And never a child awake but you.

CHILD

Mother, mother, speak low in my ear,
Some of the things are so great and near,
Some are so small and far away,

I have a fear that I cannot say.

What have I done, and what do I fear,
And why are you crying, mother dear?

MOTHER

Out in the city sounds begin,

Thank the kind God, the carts come in!
An hour or two more, and God is so kind,
The day shall be blue on the window-blind.

Then shall my child go sweetly asleep,
To dream of the birds and the hills of sheep

So in the dream-beleaguered night,
While the other children lie

Quiet, and the stars are high,
The poor unused and playful mite
Lies strangling in the grasp of fright.

O, when all golden comes the day,
And the other children leap,
Singing, from the doors of sleep,
Lord, take Thy heavy hand away,
Lord, in Thy mercy, heal or slay.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

DON QUIXOTE

When knights and chivalry were going out of fashion, a Spanish author, Cervantes, wrote a comic and yet sad caricature of a knight he called Don Quixote, who went about looking for adventures. He rode a melancholy horse, and fancied that he was protecting beautiful ladies in distress and fighting giants and other enemies. He fancied that even some windmills were enemies; and he made his lance ready, put spurs to his horse, and charged them. Austin Dobson thought there were worse things in the later world than such heroes as this poor knight.

BEHIND thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro, Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe, And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,

Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack! To make wiseacredom, both high and low, Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)

Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track:

Alas, poor knight! Alas, poor soul possest! Yet would to-day when courtesy grows chill, And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,

Some fire of thine might burn within us still! Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest, And charge in earnest. were it but a mill.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

THE REAPER

The rich imagery, in so few words, all holds together perfectly the sickle of the moon, the reaping, the granary.

:

TELL me whither, maiden June,
Down the dusky slope of noon,
With thy sickle of a moon,
Goest thou to reap.

"Fields of fancy by the stream
Of night in silvery silence gleam,
To reap with many a harvest-dream
The granary of sleep."

JOHN BANISTER TABB.

GOD'S LIKENESS

A lovely lesson of charity between every man and his neighbour.

Nor in mine own, but in my neighbour's face Must I Thine image trace:

Nor he in his, but in the light of mine,

Behold Thy face divine.

JOHN BANISTER TABB.

HOLY GROUND

PAUSE where apart the fallen sparrow lies,

And lightly tread;

For there the pity of a Father's eyes

Enshrines the dead.

JOHN BANISTER TABB.

"MAMMY"

The negro nurse of American children born in the Southern states of the Union had the pet name of Mammy." This poet (a Catholic priest) was blind for some years before his death. He, an American, writes of his nurse's black face; and, as usual, puts much fine meaning and imagination into a very few beautiful lines.

I LOVED her countenance whereon,
Despite the longest day.

The tenderness of visions gone
In shadow seemed to stay.
And now, when faithless sight is fled.
Beyond my waking gaze,

Of darkness I am not afraid—

It is my Mammy's face.

JOHN BANISTER TABB.

THE BROOK

The brook is speaking, expressing an idea most fit for poetry-the carrying of the mountain's message to the sea.

It is the mountain to the sea

That makes a messenger of me:
And, lest I loiter on the way
And lose what I was meant to say,
He sets his reverie to song
And bids me sing it all day long.
Farewell! for here the stream is slow,

And I have many a mile to go.

JOHN BANISTER TABB.