In My Nursery. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe

      Sweet! when first my baby ear

      Curled itself and learned to hear,

      'Twas your silver-singing voice

      Made my baby heart rejoice.

      Hushed upon your tender breast,

      Soft you sang me to my rest;

      Waking, when I sought my play,

      Still your singing led the way.

      Cradle songs, more soft and low

      Than the bird croons on the bough;

      Olden ballads, grave and gay,

      Warrior's chant, and lover's lay.

      So my baby hours went

      In a cadence of content,

      To the music and the rhyme

      Keeping tune and keeping time.

      So you taught me, too, ere long,

      All our life should be a song, —

      Should a faltering prelude be

      To the heavenly harmony;

      And with gracious words and high,

      Bade me look beyond the sky,

      To the Glory throned above,

      To th' eternal Light and Love.

      Many years have blossomed by:

      Far and far from childhood I;

      Yet its sunrays on me fall,

      Here among my children all.

      So among my babes I go,

      Singing high and singing low;

      Striving for the silver tone

      Which my memory holds alone.

      If I chant my little lays

      Tunefully, be yours the praise;

      If I fail, 'tis I must rue

      Not t' have closelier followed you.

      In my nursery as I sit,

      To and fro the children flit:

      Rosy Alice, eldest born,

      Rosalind like summer morn,

      Sturdy Hal, as brown as berry,

      Little Julia, shy and merry,

      John the King, who rules us all,

      And the Baby sweet and small.

      Flitting, flitting to and fro,

      Light they come and light they go:

      And their presence fair and young

      Still I weave into my song.

      Here rings out their merry laughter,

      Here their speech comes tripping after:

      Here their pranks, their sportive ways,

      Flash along the lyric maze,

      Till I hardly know, in fine,

      What is theirs and what is mine:

      Can but say, through wind and weather,

      They and I have wrought together.

      What will the baby be, Mamma,

      (With a kick and a crow, and a hushaby-low).

      What will the baby be, Mamma,

      When he grows up into a man?

      Will he always kick, and always crow,

      And flourish his arms and his legs about so,

      And make up such horrible faces, you know,

      As ugly as ever he can?

      The baby he may be a soldier, my dear,

      With a fife and a drum, and a rum-tiddy-tum!

      The baby he may be a soldier, my dear,

      When he grows up into a man.

      He will draw up his regiment all in a row,

      And flourish his sword in the face of the foe,

      Who will hie them away on a tremulous toe,

      As quickly as ever they can.

      The baby he may be a sailor, my dear,

      With a fore and an aft, and a tight little craft

      The baby he may be a sailor, my dear,

      When he grows up into a man.

      He will hoist his sails with a "Yo! heave, ho!"

      And take in his reefs when it comes on to blow,

      And shiver his timbers and so forth, you know,

      On a genuine nautical plan.

      The baby he may be a doctor, my dear,

      With a powder and pill, and a nice little bill.

      The baby he may be a doctor, my dear,

      When he grows up into a man.

      He will dose you with rhubarb, and calomel too,

      With draughts that are black and with pills that are blue;

      And the chances will be, when he's finished with you,

      You'll be worse off than when he began.

      The baby he may be a lawyer, my dear,

      With a bag and a fee, and a legal decree.

      The baby he may be a lawyer, my dear,

      When he grows up into a man.

      But, oh! dear me, should I tell to you

      The terrible things that a lawyer can do,

      You would take to your heels when he came into view,

      And run from Beersheba to Dan.

      Like a little crumpled roseleaf

      It lies on my bosom now,

      Like a tiny sunset cloudlet,

      Like a flake of rose-tinted snow;

      And the pretty, helpless fingers

      Are never a moment at rest,

      But ever are moving and straying

      About on the mother's breast:

      Trying to grasp the sunbeam

      That streams through the window high;

      Trying to catch the white garments

      Of the angels hovering by.

      And as she pats and caresses

      The dear little lovely hand,

      The mother's thoughts go forward

      Toward the future's shadowy land.

      And ever her anxious vision

      Strives to pierce each coming year,

      With a mother's height of rapture,

      With a mother's depth of fear,

      As she thinks, "In the years that are coming,

      Be they many or be they few,

      What work is the good God sending

      For this little hand to do?

      Will it always be open in giving,

      And always strong for the right?

      Will