THERE was a time when I was very small, | |
| When my whole frame was but an ell in height; | |
| Sweetly, as I recall it, tears do fall, | |
| And therefore I recall it with delight. | |
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| I sported in my tender mother’s arms, | 5 |
| And rode a-horseback on best father’s knee; | |
| Alike were sorrows, passions and alarms, | |
| And gold, and Greek, and love, unknown to me. | |
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| Then seemed to me this world far less in size, | |
| Likewise it seemed to me less wicked far; | 10 |
| Like points in heaven, I saw the stars arise, | |
| And longed for wings that I might catch a star. | |
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| I saw the moon behind the island fade, | |
| And thought, “Oh, were I on that island there, | |
| I could find out of what the moon is made, | 15 |
| Find out how large it is, how round, how fair!” | |
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| Wondering, I saw God’s sun, through western skies, | |
| Sink in the ocean’s golden lap at night, | |
| And yet upon the morrow early rise, | |
| And paint the eastern heaven with crimson light; | 20 |
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| And thought of God, the gracious Heavenly Father, | |
| Who made me, and that lovely sun on high, | |
| And all those pearls of heaven thick-strung together, | |
| Dropped, clustering, from his hand o’er all the sky. | |
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| With childish reverence, my young lips did say | 25 |
| The prayer my pious mother taught to me: | |
| “O gentle God! oh, let me strive alway | |
| Still to be wise, and good, and follow thee!” | |
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| So prayed I for my father and my mother, | |
| And for my sister, and for all the town; | 30 |
| The king I knew not, and the beggar-brother, | |
| Who, bent with age, went, sighing, up and down. | |
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| They perished, the blithe days of boyhood perished, | |
| And all the gladness, all the peace I knew! | |
| Now have I but their memory, fondly cherished;— | 35 |
| God! may I never lose that too! | |
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