Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Buttercups and Daisies

Shall birds and bees and ants be wise,

While I my moments waste?

Oh, let me with the morning rise,

And to my duties haste.

Why should I sleep till beams of morn
Their light and glory shed?.
Immortal beings were not born
To waste their time in bed.

117

Jane Taylor [1783-1824]

BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES

BUTTERCUPS and daisies,

Oh, the pretty flowers; Coming ere the spring time,

To tell of sunny hours, While the trees are leafless,

While the fields are bare,

Buttercups and daisies

Spring up here and there.

Ere the snow-drop peepeth,
Ere the crocus bold,

Ere the early primrose

Opes its paly gold,

Somewhere on the sunny bank

Buttercups are bright;

Somewhere midst the frozen grass

Peeps the daisy white.

Little hardy flowers,

Like to children poor,

Playing in their sturdy health

By their mother's door.

Purple with the north-wind,
Yet alert and bold;

Fearing not, and caring not,

Though they be a-cold!

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Through the warm, sunny months of gay summer and spring,

Began to complain, when he found that at home

His cupboard was empty and winter was come.

Not a crumb to be found

On the snow-covered ground;

Not a flower could he see,

Not a leaf on a tree:

"Oh, what will become," says the cricket, "of me?"

At last by starvation and famine made bold,

All dripping with wet and all trembling with cold,

Away he set off to a miserly ant,

To see if, to keep him alive, he would grant [

Him shelter from rain:

A mouthful of grain

He wished only to borrow,

He'd repay it to-morrow:

If not, he must die of starvation and sorrow.

Says the ant to the cricket, "I'm your servant and friend,

But we ants never borrow, we ants never lend;

But tell me, dear sir, did you lay nothing by

When the weather was warm?" Said the cricket, "Not I.

My heart was so light

That I sang day and night,
For all nature looked gay."

"You sang, sir, you say?

Go then," said the ant, “and dance winter away."

Deeds of Kindness

Thus ending, he hastily lifted the wicket

And out of the door turned the poor little cricket.
Though this is a fable, the moral is good:

119

If you live without work, you must live without food.

AFTER WINGS

THIS was your butterfly, you see,—
His fine wings made him vain:
The caterpillars crawl, but he

Passed them in rich disdain.—
My pretty boy says, "Let him be
Only a worm again!"

Unknown

O child, when things have learned to wear
Wings once, they must be fain

To keep them always high and fair:
Think of the creeping pain

Which even a butterfly must bear

To be a worm again!

Sarah M. B. Piatt [1836

DEEDS OF KINDNESS

SUPPOSE the little Cowslip

Should hang its golden cup
And say, "I'm such a little flower
I'd better not grow up!"
How many a weary traveller

Would miss its fragrant smell,

How many a little child would grieve
To lose it from the dell!

Suppose the glistening Dewdrop

Upon the grass should say,
"What can a little dewdrop do?
I'd better roll away!"

The blade on which it rested,

Before the day was done,
Without a drop to moisten it,.
Would wither in the sun.

Suppose the little Breezes,

Upon a summer's day,

Should think themselves too small to cool

The traveller on his way:

Who would not miss the smallest

And softest ones that blow,

And think they made a great mistake
If they were acting so?

How many deed of kindness

A little child can do,

Although it has but little strength

And little wisdom too!

It wants a loving spirit

Much more than strength, to prove

How many things a child may do

For others by its love.

Epes Sargent [1813-1880]

THE LION AND THE MOUSE

A LION with the heat oppressed,
One day composed himself to rest:
But while he dozed as he intended,
A mouse, his royal back ascended;
Nor thought of harm, as Esop tells,
Mistaking him for someone else;

And travelled over him, and round him,
And might have left him as she found him
Had she not-tremble when you hear—
Tried to explore the monarch's ear!

Who straightway woke, with wrath immense,
And shook his head to cast her thence.

"You rascal, what are you about?"
Said he, when he had turned her out,
"I'll teach you soon," the lion said,
"To make a mouse-hole in my head!"
So saying, he prepared his foot
To crush the trembling tiny brute;

The Boy and the Wolf

But she (the mouse) with tearful eye,
Implored the lion's clemency,
Who thought it best at last to give
His little prisoner a reprieve.

'Twas nearly twelve months after this,
The lion chanced his way to miss;
When pressing forward, heedless yet,
He got entangled in a net.

With dreadful rage, he stamped and tore,
And straight commenced a lordly roar;
When the poor mouse, who heard the noise,
Attended, for she knew his voice.

Then what the lion's utmost strength
Could not effect, she did at length;
With patient labor she applied
Her teeth, the network to divide;
And so at last forth issued he,
A lion, by a mouse set free.

Few are so small or weak, I guess,
But may assist us in distress,
Nor shall we ever, if we're wise,
The meanest, or the least despise.

121

Jeffreys Taylor [1792-1853]

THE BOY AND THE WOLF

A LITTLE BOY was set to keep

A little flock of goats or sheep;

He thought the task too solitary,

And took a strange perverse vagary:

To call the people out of fun,

To see them leave their work and run,

He cried and screamed with all his might,

"Wolf! wolf!" in a pretended fright.

Some people, working at a distance,
Came running in to his assistance.

They searched the fields and bushes round,
The Wolf was nowhere to be found.

« ZurückWeiter »