He’s fast asleep. See how, O Wife,
Night’s finger on the lip of life
Bids whist the tongue, so prattle-rife,
Of busy Baby Charley.
One arm stretched backward round his head,
Five little toes from out the bed
Just showing, like five rosebuds red,
– So slumbers Baby Charley.
Heaven-lights, I know, are beaming through
Those lucent eyelids, veined with blue,
That shut away from [...]

“ARE you ready for your steeplechase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree?
Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree.
You’re booked to ride your capping race to-day at Coulterlee,
You’re booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to see,
To keep him straight, and keep him first, and win the run for me.”
Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree.
She clasp’d her [...]

We pace each other for a long time.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the baby on the mountain. I am
in a cold stream where I led you.
I packed my anger with the beef jerky.
You are the woman sticking her tongue out
in a cold stream where I led you.
You are the woman with [...]

Dance little baby, dance up high,
Never mind baby, mother is by;
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There little baby, there you go;
Up to the ceiling, down to the ground,
Backwards and forwards, round and round;
Dance little baby, and mother shall sing,
With the merry coral, ding, ding, ding.
This poem was written/submitted by Ann Taylor.

It’s when the birds go piping and the daylight slowly breaks,
That, clamoring for his dinner, our precious baby wakes;
Then it’s sleep no more for baby, and it’s sleep no more for me,
For, when he wants his dinner, why it’s dinner it must be!
And of that lacteal fluid he partakes with great ado,
While gran’ma laughs,
And gran’pa [...]

Come round me, little childer;
There, don’t fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.
My man was a poor fisher
With shore lines in the say;
My work was saltin’ herrings
The whole of the long day.
And sometimes from the Saltin’ shed
I scarce could drag my feet,
Under the blessed moonlight,
Along thc pebbly street.
I’d always been [...]

The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all’s poetry with him.
Rhyme and music flow in plenty
For the lad of one-and-twenty,
But Spring for him is no more now
Than daisies to a munching cow;
Just a cheery pleasant season,
Daisy buds to live at ease on.
He’s forgotten how he smiled
And shrieked [...]

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till thy little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.
What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly [...]

A city clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist’s orphan child–
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month’s leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock’d, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his work; [...]

A baby shines as bright
If winter or if May be
On eyes that keep in sight
A baby.
Though dark the skies or grey be,
It fills our eyes with light,
If midnight or midday be.
Love hails it, day and night,
The sweetest thing that may be
Yet cannot praise aright
A baby.
II.
All heaven, in every baby born,
All absolute of earthly leaven,
Reveals itself, [...]