Classic Poem

I WRITE . He sits beside my chair,
— And scribbles, too, in hushed delight,
He dips his pen in charmed air:
— What is it he pretends to write?

He toils and toils; the paper gives
— No clue to aught he thinks. What then?
His little heart is glad; he lives
— The poems that he cannot pen.

Strange fancies throng that baby brain.
— What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes!
He stops — reflects — and now again
— His unrecording pen he plies.

It seems a satire on myself, —
— These dreamy nothings scrawled in air,
This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf,
— Wouldst drive thy father to despair?

Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind
— Persists in hoping, — schemes and strives
That there may linger with our kind
— Some memory of our little lives.

Beneath his rock in the early world
— Smiling the naked hunter lay,
And sketched on horn the spear he hurled,
— The urus which he made his prey.

Like him I strive in hope my rhymes
— May keep my name a little while, —
O child, who knows how many times
— We two have made the angels smile!