Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/Sketching the castle

by Shirley Brooks

SKETCHING THE CASTLE.

I.

Sketching the castle, there they sit,
A happy group, this summer day:
But I, who cannot draw one bit,
Can sketch it too as well as they.

 

II.

Yet if you saw my castle-sketch
You might begin to laugh or rail:
I own, indeed, it might not fetch
A price at Mr. Christie’s sale.

 

III.

For, look. You find no donjon-keep,
No frowning arch, no stern old wall;
And where’s the moat, so broad and deep?
“It’s not,” you say, “the thing at all.

 

IV.

“You’ve tried to draw an English cot,
A cottage set in flowers and trees,
A fountain near a garden grot,
And birds of song, and hives of bees.

 

V.

“And there’s a lady, young and mild,
Who smiles her bees and flowers among;
Before her crawls a white-limb’d child,
Beside her sits a husband young.

 

VI.

“And, yes,—why, you audacious wretch,
She’s something like Miss Laura there—”
Pooh, hold your tongue, I choose to sketch
My little castle—in the air.

S. B.