The Bathing Children
Clumps of lilies-of-the-valley, daisies too on either hand
Fringe a small transparent brooklet gliding o'er its bed of sand;
Hedges clad in snowy blossoms breathe their perfume manifold,
Maples o'er the water-lilies lean their boughs of green and gold.
Two small children, boy and girl, are sitting there amid the flowers,
Hawk-and-dove they 've been a-playing all the warm long morning hours.
Says the boy, “I 'm going bathing, it's so hot here in the sun.”
“Yes, the water's cool,” the girl says; “I 'll go bathing too. What fun!”
Soon the boy has cast his stockings and his other clothes aside,
Scattered on the grass about him, though the dew is scarcely dried.
Pantaloons with bright suspenders which his mother made for him,
Though discarded, show the roundness of each little chubby limb.
By this careless heap the maiden, far more orderly than he,
Lays her kerchief, skirt, and bodice, with her linen, daintily;
Lays on top her summer bonnet with its ribbons all agleam,
And with shouts of joy the two then jump into the limpid stream.
Look! to meet the merry children how the brook's clear waters leap,
Round their fresh and lovely bodies cuddling wavelets kiss and creep;
Pearly drops fly all around them-high above the streamlet's brim
Where the boy with glad endeavor shows his playmate how to swim.
If she learn, he 'll fill her basket full of nuts, a princely treat.
How she sprawls and kicks and splashes with her plump and dainty feet!
How she stretches out first one arm, then the other, while she rests
With the boy's firm hands upholding underneath her tender breasts!
Meanwhile from her new-built dwelling in a bending maple tree,
Twittering, a sparrow-mother spies the two, and thus thinks she:
“Though they have no wings to fly with, yet their antics are the same
As when I and sparrow-father played in youth the splashing game.”
So too when the lark above them, poising on his out-stretched wing,
Sees the innocents at play there, loud his throbbing quavers ring,
Like an echo of the gladness that resounded to the skies
When the first lark sang his rapture o'er the groves of Paradise.
Fringe a small transparent brooklet gliding o'er its bed of sand;
Hedges clad in snowy blossoms breathe their perfume manifold,
Maples o'er the water-lilies lean their boughs of green and gold.
Two small children, boy and girl, are sitting there amid the flowers,
Hawk-and-dove they 've been a-playing all the warm long morning hours.
Says the boy, “I 'm going bathing, it's so hot here in the sun.”
“Yes, the water's cool,” the girl says; “I 'll go bathing too. What fun!”
Soon the boy has cast his stockings and his other clothes aside,
Scattered on the grass about him, though the dew is scarcely dried.
Pantaloons with bright suspenders which his mother made for him,
Though discarded, show the roundness of each little chubby limb.
By this careless heap the maiden, far more orderly than he,
Lays her kerchief, skirt, and bodice, with her linen, daintily;
Lays on top her summer bonnet with its ribbons all agleam,
And with shouts of joy the two then jump into the limpid stream.
Look! to meet the merry children how the brook's clear waters leap,
Round their fresh and lovely bodies cuddling wavelets kiss and creep;
Pearly drops fly all around them-high above the streamlet's brim
Where the boy with glad endeavor shows his playmate how to swim.
If she learn, he 'll fill her basket full of nuts, a princely treat.
How she sprawls and kicks and splashes with her plump and dainty feet!
How she stretches out first one arm, then the other, while she rests
With the boy's firm hands upholding underneath her tender breasts!
Meanwhile from her new-built dwelling in a bending maple tree,
Twittering, a sparrow-mother spies the two, and thus thinks she:
“Though they have no wings to fly with, yet their antics are the same
As when I and sparrow-father played in youth the splashing game.”
So too when the lark above them, poising on his out-stretched wing,
Sees the innocents at play there, loud his throbbing quavers ring,
Like an echo of the gladness that resounded to the skies
When the first lark sang his rapture o'er the groves of Paradise.
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