What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things, no doubt;
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery!
Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,
As if his head were as full of kinks
And curious riddles as any sphinx!
- Josiah Gilbert Holland (used pseudonym Timothy Titcomb),
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Sweet is the infant's waking smile,
And sweet the old man's rest--
But middle age by no read more
Sweet is the infant's waking smile,
And sweet the old man's rest--
But middle age by no fond wile,
No soothing calm is blest.
When you fold your hands, Baby Louise!
Your hands like a fairy's, so tiny and fair,
With read more
When you fold your hands, Baby Louise!
Your hands like a fairy's, so tiny and fair,
With a pretty, innocent, saintlike air,
Are you trying to think of some angel-taught prayer
You learned above, Baby Louise.
The morning that my baby came
They found a baby swallow dead,
And saw a something hard read more
The morning that my baby came
They found a baby swallow dead,
And saw a something hard to name
Fly mothlike over baby's bed.
Suck, baby! suck! mother's love grows by giving:
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
read more
Suck, baby! suck! mother's love grows by giving:
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
Black manhood comes when riotous guilty living
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting.
A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.
A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping.
When the baby dies,
On every side
Rose stranger's voices, hard and harsh and loud.
read more
When the baby dies,
On every side
Rose stranger's voices, hard and harsh and loud.
The baby was not wrapped in any shroud.
The mother made no sound. Her head was bowed
That men's eyes might not see
Her misery.
He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on
And smile, thou little, young inheritor
Of a world scarce less young: read more
He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on
And smile, thou little, young inheritor
Of a world scarce less young: sleep on and smile!
Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering
And innocent!
"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand.
It is bad to rock the baby, they read more
"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand.
It is bad to rock the baby, they would have us understand;
So the cradle's but a relic of the former foolish days,
When mothers reared their children in unscientific ways;
When they jounced them and they bounced them, those poor dwarfs
of long ago--
The Washingtons and Jeffersons, you know.
Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms,
And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine,
read more
Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms,
And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine,
To hail his father; while his little form
Flutters as winged with joy. Talk not of pain!
The childless cherubs well might envy thee
The pleasures of a parent.
