boys
Sleepy after the afternoon.

THE LADY NANCY

What's the gooder being good?
Always every day
Somefing comes and compradicks
Everyfing I play.

I was digging in the garden
And I digged me toe,
Why do I do that for?
I don't know!

Then I goes and chases Sufi,
Sufi won't be chased:
I falled over the wheelbarrow
And hurted all me waist.

I tooks me little pictures out
And laid them in a row,
I told the wind to stop away
And not come round and blow.

Up there comes a norful wind
And brushed the lot away:
Daddie, Gord's been 'noying me
All this day.

THE HANGING SWORD

I used to stride like a warrior
All hot for alarms, and game--
But I'm not the fellow I was before
The little babies came.

Now, furtive 'mid the city's noise,
I pause, I start, I flee!
For what would happen to my little boys
If a tram ran over me?

NONSENSE IMMORTAL

From France or Spain or the Himalayas,
Out of the hearts of unknown loons,
In toothless mouths of old soothsayers,
On hairy lips of wandering players
Come the lullabies, come the croons.

Lords have lashed and poets have pondered,
Blood has flowed in the runnels deep,
Beacons have broken and faiths been squandered;
Through dank forests these songs have wandered
Quietly crooning our babes to sleep.

Grandmother melodies, grandmother fancies,
Crooned by the Oxus ever endure!
Epics of valour and throne romances
Have much honour and take big chances,
But the clowns who sang for the babes are sure.

The goblin speaks while in old caves moulder
Priest-made destinies and lord-made law,
The goblin leered from the monarch's shoulder
And, his sight being true and his young heart bolder,
'Twas only the goblin the baby saw!

So the god's death agonies are baby chatter!
A ball on the floor of the nursery room
The red earth rolls, for what can matter
If old John Spratt licks clean his platter
And the brown cows go to the broom?

THE ROAD OF NOW AND THEN

Tinkle, tinkle go the bells,
King and prince and silver knight
March through stories grandma tells
When the winter fire's alight.

Down the Road of Stories ride
People who have never died;
Fairi