To E.M., 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.