to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
and whispers of a summer sea.+

Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task,
Eager she wields her spade: yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
The tale he loves to tell.

Rude spirits of the seething outer strife,
Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life,
Empty of all delight!

Chat on, sweet Maid, and rescue from annoy
Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled.
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
The heart-love of a child!

Away, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!

PREFACE.

If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense
were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem,
it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p. 18)

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes."

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal
indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such
a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of
this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously
inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History--I will
take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.

The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used
to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished,
and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it,
that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged
to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman
about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in
pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been
able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on,
anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman* used to stand by with tears in
his eyes: _he_ knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code,
"_No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm_," had been completed by the
Bellman himself with the words "_and the Man at the Helm shall speak to
no one_." So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done
till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals th