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TO CHARLOTTE PULTENEY.

TIMELY blossom, Infant fair,

Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn and every night
Their solicitous delight,

Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing, without skill to please;
Little gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale,
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue;
Simple maiden, void of art,
Babbling out the very heart,
Yet abandoned to thy will,
Yet imagining no ill,

Yet too innocent to blush;
Like the linnet in the bush
To the mother-linnet's note
Moduling her slender throat;
Chirping forth thy petty joys,
Wanton in the change of toys,
Like the linnet green, in May
Flitting to each bloomy spray;
Wearied then and glad of rest,
Like the linnet in the nest :-
This thy present happy lot,
This in time will be forgot:
Other pleasures, other cares,
Ever busy Time prepares;
And thou shalt in thy daughter see,
This picture, once, resembled thee.

AMBROSE PHILIPS.

TO MY INFANT SON.

THOU happy, happy elf!

(But stop, first let me kiss away that tear,) Thou tiny image of myself!

(My love, he's poking peas into his ear,) Thou merry, laughing sprite,

With spirits, feather light,

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Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,

THE LOST HEIR.

"O where, and O where

Is my bonnie laddie gone?"— OLD SONG.

ONE day, as I was going by

That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry

That chilled my very blood;
And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,

Bedaubed with grease and mud.

She turned her East, she turned her West,
Staring like Pythoness possest,

With streaming hair and heaving breast,

As one stark mad with grief.

"O Lord! O dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring'wild!

Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?

Lawk help me, I don't know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way –

A Child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay.

I am all in a quiver-get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M'Nab! You promised to have half an eye to him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab.

The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed Motherly eyes, Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt-pies.

I wonder he left the court, where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys. When his Father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one,

He'll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost; and the beef and the inguns not done!

(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) La bless you, good folks, mind your own concarns, and don't be making a mob in the street;

With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk!

(He's got the scissors, snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose!

(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose !)

Balmy and breathing music like the south,
(He really brings my heart into my mouth!)
Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove;
(I'll tell you what, my love,

I cannot write unless he's sent above.)

THOMAS HOOD.

O Sergeant M'Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat?

Do, good people, move on! don't stand staring

at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs; Saints forbid but he's p'r'aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the priggs;

He'd a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair;

And his trousers considering not very much | Why, there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the patched, and red plush, they was once his young wretch, it's that Billy as sartin as sin !

Father's best pair.

His shirt, it's very lucky I'd got washing in the But let me get him home, with a good grip of tub, or that might have gone with the his hair, and I'm blest if he shall have a rest; whole bone in his skin!

But he'd got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.

He'd a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sewed in, and not quite so much jagged at

the brim.

With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you'll know by that if it's him.

And then he has got such dear winning waysbut O, I never, never shall see him no more !

O dear! to think of losing him just after nussing him back from death's door!

Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang 'em, was at twenty a penny.! And the threepence he'd got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many.

And the Cholera man came and whitewashed us all, and, drat him! made a seize of our hog.

It's no use to send the Crier to cry him about, he's such a blunderin' drunken old dog; The last time he was fetched to find a lost child he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown,

And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted Mother and Father about Town.

Billy-where are you, Billy, I say? come, Billy, come home, to your best of Mothers! I'm scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they drive so, they'd run over their own Sisters and Brothers.

Or maybe he's stole by some chimbly-sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not,

And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketched, and the chimbly's red hot.

O, I'd give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin' eyes on his face.

For he's my darlin' of darlin's, and if he don't soon come back, you'll see me drop stone dead on the place.

I only wish I'd got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and would n't I hug him and kiss him!

Lawk! I never knew what a precious he was but a child don't not feel like a child till you miss him.

THOMAS HOOD.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

COME back, come back together,
All ye fancies of the past,
Ye days of April weather,
Ye shadows that are cast

By the haunted hours before!
Come back, come back, my Childhood;
Thou art summoned by a spell
From the green leaves of the wildwood,
From beside the charméd well,
For Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore!

The fields were covered over
With colors as she went;
Daisy, buttercup, and clover
Below her footsteps bent;

Summer shed its shining store;
She was happy as she pressed them
Beneath her little feet;

She plucked them and caressed them;
They were so very sweet,

They had never seemed so sweet before,
To Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore.

How the heart of childhood dances
Upon a sunny day

It has its own romances,

And a wide, wide world have they !
A world where Phantasie is king,
Made all of eager dreaming;
When once grown up and tall –
Now is the time for scheming-
Then we shall do them all!

Do such pleasant fancies spring
For Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore?

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With Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore.

Did the painter, dreaming

In a morning hour,
Catch the fairy seeming
Of this fairy flower?
Winning it with eager eyes
From the old enchanted stories,
Lingering with a long delight
On the unforgotten glories
Of the infant sight?

Giving us a sweet surprise
In Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore?

Too long in the meadow staying,
Where the cowslip bends,
With the buttercups delaying
As with early friends,

Did the little maiden stay.
Sorrowful the tale for us;

We, too, loiter mid life's flowers,

A little while so glorious,

So soon lost in darker hours.

All love lingering on their way,
Like Red Riding Hood, the darling,
The flower of fairy lore.

LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON.

THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD.
Now ponder well, you parents dear,
The words which I shall write ;
A doleful story you shall hear,

In time brought forth to light:
A gentleman, of good account,
In Norfolk lived of late,

Whose wealth and riches did surmount
Most men of his estate.

Sore sick he was, and like to die,

No help then he could have; His wife by him as sick did lie,

And both possessed one grave. No love between these two was lost, Each was to other kind;

In love they lived, in love they died, And left two babes behind :

The one a fine and pretty boy,

Not passing three years old ;

The other a girl, more young than he,
And made in beauty's mould.`
The father left his little son,

As plainly doth appear,
When he to perfect age should come,
Three hundred pounds a year,

And to his little daughter Jane
Five hundred pounds in gold,
To be paid down on marriage-day,
Which might not be controlled;
But if the children chanced to die
Ere they to age should come,
Their uncle should possess their wealth,
For so the will did run.

"Now, brother," said the dying man,

"Look to my children dear;

Be good unto my boy and girl,
No friends else I have here."
With that bespake their mother dear,
"O brother kind," quoth she,

"You are the man must bring our babes To wealth or misery.

"And if you keep them carefully,
Then God will you reward;
If otherwise you seem to deal,

God will your deeds regard."
With lips as cold as any stone

She kissed her children small: "God bless you both, my children dear," With that the tears did fall.

Their parents being dead and gone,

The children home he takes, And brings them home unto his house, And much of them he makes. He had not kept these pretty babes A twelvemonth and a day, But, for their wealth, he did devise To make them both away.

He bargained with two ruffians strong,
Which were of furious mood,

That they should take these children young,
And slay them in a wood.

He told his wife, and all he had

He did the children send
To be brought up in fair London,
With one that was his friend.

Away then went these pretty babes,
Rejoicing at that tide,
Rejoicing with a merry mind,

They should on cock-horse ride;
They prate and prattle pleasantly,
As they rode on the way,
To those that should their butchers be,
And work their lives' decay,

So that the pretty speech they had Made Murder's heart relent; And they that undertook the deed Full sore they did repent.

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