A Ballad Of Nursery Rhyme

Strawberries that in gardens grow      Are plump and juicy fine,     But sweeter far as wise men know      Spring from the woodland vine.     No need for bowl or silver spoon,      Sugar or spice or cream,     Has the wild berry plucked in June      Beside the trickling stream.     One such to melt at the tongue's root,      Confounding taste with scent,     Beats a full peck of garden fruit:      Which points my argument.     May sudden justice overtake      And snap the froward pen,     That old and palsied poets shake      Against the minds of men;     Blasphemers trusting to hold caught      In far-flung webs of ink     The utmost ends of human thought,      Till nothing's left to think.     But may the gift of heavenly peace      And glory for all time     Keep the boy Tom who tending geese      First made the nursery rhyme.     By the brookside one August day,      Using the sun for clock,     Tom whiled the languid hours away      Beside his scattering flock,     Carving with a sharp pointed stone      On a broad slab of slate     The famous lives of Jumping Joan,      Dan Fox and Greedy Kate;     Rhyming of wolves and bears and birds,      Spain, Scotland, Babylon,     That sister Kate might learn the words      To tell to Toddling John.     But Kate, who could not stay content      To learn her lesson pat,     New beauty to the rough lines lent      By changing this or that;     And she herself set fresh things down      In corners of her slate,     Of lambs and lanes and London Town.      God's blessing fall on Kate!     The baby loved the simple sound,      With jolly glee he shook,     And soon the lines grew smooth and round      Like pebbles in Tom's brook,     From mouth to mouth told and retold      By children sprawled at ease     Before the fire in winter's cold,      In June beneath tall trees;     Till though long lost are stone and slate,      Though the brook no more runs,     And dead long time are Tom, John, Kate,      Their sons and their sons' sons;     Yet, as when Time with stealthy tread      Lays the rich garden waste,     The woodland berry ripe and red      Fails not in scent or taste,     So these same rhymes shall still be told      To children yet unborn,     While false philosophy growing old      Fades and is killed by scorn.