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...MEETING AND PASSING by ROBERT FROST THE SABBATH OF THE SOUL by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD TO THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON by JOHN CLEVELAND GOLD-OF-OPHIR ROSES by GRACE ATHERTON DENNEN THE ENCHANTMENT by THOMAS OTWAY THE MASK OF ANARCHY; WRITTEN ON OCCASION OF MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY |