SEVEN TIMES FOUR HEIGH HO! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall, When the wind wakes how they rock in the grasses, And dance with the cuckoo-buds, slender and small: Here's two bonny boys, and here's mother's own lasses, Eager to gather them all. Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups, Mother shall thread them a daisy chain; Sing them a song of the pretty hedge-spar row, That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain; Sing, "Heart thou art wide though the house Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups, Sweet wagging cowslips, they bend and they bow; A ship sails afar over warm ocean waters, And haply one musing doth stand at her prow. O bonny brown sons, and O sweet little daughters, Maybe he thinks on you now! Heigh ho! daisies and buttercups, Fair yellow daffodils stately and tall; A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure, And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall, Send down on their pleasure smiles passing its measure God that is over us all. Jean Ingelow A MOTHER'S PICTURE SHE seemed an angel to our infant eyes ! Once, when the glorifying moon revealed Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise We looked to see the pinions half-concealed. The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield Her back to me, who loved her in this wise, And since have little known her, but have grown To see another mother, tenderly, Watch over sleeping darlings of her own; |