I WRITE. He sits beside my chair, And scribbles, too, in hushed delight, He dips his pen in charmed air: What is it he pretends to write? He toils and toils; the paper gives No clue to aught he thinks. What then? His little heart is glad; he lives The poems that he cannot pen. Strange fancies throng that baby brain. What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes! He stops -- reflects -- and now again His unrecording pen he plies. It seems a satire on myself, -- These dreamy nothings scrawled in air, This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf, Wouldst drive thy father to despair? Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind Persists in hoping, -- schemes and strives That there may linger with our kind Some memory of our little lives. Beneath his rock i' the early world Smiling the naked hunter lay, And sketched on horn the spear he hurled, The urus which he made his prey. Like him I strive in hope my rhymes May keep my name a little while, -- O child, who knows how many times We two have made the angels smile! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A DOUBLE BALLAD OF GOOD COUNSEL by FRANCOIS VILLON COMPLAINT by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE BEACON; A MUSICAL DRAMA by JOANNA BAILLIE LESSER EPISTLES: TO A LADY ON HER PASSION FOR OLD CHINA by JOHN GAY THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS by RUDYARD KIPLING |