Adeline Whitney - Mother Goose for Grown Folks

Ah, she was little! When the air first
shattered with that shock,
Down ran the mouse into her hole. "Hic,
diccory! die—dock!"
Too plain to be translated is the truth the
tale would show,
Small souls, in solemn upshot, had better
wait below.

"Little Bo-Peep
Has lost her sheep,
And does n't know where to find 'em;
Let 'em alone,
And they 'll come home,
And bring their tails behind 'em."

Hope beckoned Youth, and bade him keep,
On Life's broad plain, his shining sheep,
And while along the sward they came,
He called them over, each by name;
This one was Friendship,—that was Health;
Another Love,—another Wealth;
One, fat, full-fleeced, was Social Station;
Another, stainless, Reputation;
In truth, a goodly flock of sheep,—
A goodly flock, but hard to keep.

Youth laid him down beside a fountain;
Hope spread his wings to scale a mountain;
And, somehow, Youth fell fast asleep,
And left his crook to tend the sheep:
No wonder, as the legend says,
They took to very crooked ways.

He woke—to hear a distant bleating,—
The faithless quadrupeds were fleeting!

Wealth vanished first, with stealthy tread,
Then Friendship followed—to be fed,—
And foolish Love was after led;
Fair Fame,—alas! some thievish scamp
Had marked him with his own black stamp!
And he, with Honor at his heels,
Was out of sight across the fields.

Health just hangs doubtful,—distant Hope
Looks backward from the mountain slope,—
And Youth himself—no longer Youth—
Stands face to face with bitter Truth.

Yet let them go! 'T were all in vain
To linger here in faith to find 'em;
Forward!—nor pause to think of pain,—
Till somewhere, on a nobler plain,
A surer Hope shall lead the train
Of joys withheld to come again
With golden fleeces trailed behind 'em!

"Solomon Grundy
Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Sick on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Dead on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday:
This was the end
Of Solomon Grundy."

So sings the unpretentious Muse
That guides the quill of Mother Goose,
And in one week of mortal strife
Presents the epitome of Life:
But down sits Billy Shakspeare next,
And, coolly taking up the text,
His thought pursues the trail of mine,
And, lo! the "Seven Ages" shine!
O world! O critics! can't you see
How Shakspeare plagiarizes me?

And other bards will after come,
To echo in a later age,
"He lived,—he died: behold the sum,
The abstract of the historian's page"
Yet once for all the thing was done,
Complete in Grundy's pilgrimage.

For not a child upon the knee
But hath the moral learned of me;
And measured, in a seven days' span,
The whole experience of man.

"Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl:
If the bowl had been stronger,
My song had been longer."

Mysteriously suggestive! A vague hint,
Yet a rare touch of most effective art,
That of the bowl, and all the voyagers in't,
Tells nothing, save the fact that they did
start.

There ending suddenly, with subtle craft,
The story stands—as 'twere a broken
shafts—'
More eloquent in mute signification,
Than lengthened detail, or precise relation.
So perfect in its very non-achieving,
That, of a truth, I cannot help believing
A rash attempt at paraphrasing it
May prove a blunder, rather than a hit.

Still, I must wish the venerable soul
Had been explicit as regards the bowl
Was it, perhaps, a railroad speculation?
Or a big ship to carry all creation,
That, by some kink of its machinery,
Failed, in the end, to carry even three?
Or other fond, erroneous calculation
Of splendid schemes that died disastrously?

It must have been of Gotham manufacture;
Though strangely weak, and liable to frac-
ture.

Yet—pause a moment—strangely, did I
say?
Scarcely, since, after all, it was but clay;—
The stuff Hope takes to build her brittle
boat,
And therein sets the wisest men afloat.
Truly, a bark would need be somewhat
stronger,
To make the halting history much longer.

Doubtless, the good Dame did but gener-
alize,—
Took a broad glance at human enterprise,
And earthly expectation, and so drew,
In pithy lines, a parable most true,—
Kindly to warn us ere we sail away,
With life's great venture, in an ark of
clay,
Where shivered fragments all around be-
token,
How even the "golden bowl" at last lies
broken!

"Rockaby, baby,
Your cradle is green;
Father's a nobleman,
Mother's a queen;
And Betty's a lady,
And wears a gold ring,
And Johnny's a drummer,
And drums for the king!"

O golden gift of childhood!
That, with its kingly touch,
Transforms to more than royalty
The thing it loveth much!

O second sight, bestowed alone
Upon the baby seer,
That the glory held in Heaven's reserve
Discerneth even here!

Though he be the humblest craftsman,
No silk nor ermine piled
Could make the father seem a whit
More noble to the child;
And the mother,—ah, what queenlier crown
Could rest upon her brow,
Than the fair and gentle dignity
It weareth to him now?

E'en the gilded ring that Michael
For a penny fairing bought,
Is the seal of Betty's ladyhood
To his untutored thought;
And the darling drum about his neck,—
His very newest toy,—
A bandsman unto Majesty
Hath straightway made the boy!

O golden gift of childhood!
If the talisman might last,
How the dull Present still should gleam
With the glory of the Past!
But the things of earth about us
Fade and dwindle as we go,
And the long perspective of our life
Is truth, and not a show!

"There was a man in our town,
And he was wondrous wise:
He jumped into a bramble-bush,
And scratched out both his eyes.
But when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main
He jumped into another bush,
And scratched them in again!"

Old Dr. Hahnemann read the tale,
(And he was wondrous wise,)
Of the man who, in the bramble-bush,
Had scratched out both his eyes.

And the fancy tickled mightily
His misty German brain,
That, by jumping in another bush,
He got them back again.

So he called it "homo-hop-athy".
And soon it came about,
That a curious crowd among the thorns
Was hopping in and out.
Yet, disguise it by the longest name
They may, it is no use;
For the world knows the discovery
Was made by Mother Goose!

And not alone in medicine
Doth the theory hold good;
In Life and in Philosophy,
The maxim still hath stood:
A morsel more of anything,
When one has got enough,
And Nature's energy disowns
The whole unkindly stuff.