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A Child’s Pity
No sweeter thing than children’s ways and wiles,
Surely, we say, can gladden eyes and ears:
Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles
Are even their tears.
Surely, we say, can gladden eyes and ears:
Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles
Are even their tears.
To one for once a piteous tale was read,
How, when the murderous mother crocodile
Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead,
Starved, by the Nile.
How, when the murderous mother crocodile
Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead,
Starved, by the Nile.
In vast green reed-beds oil the vast grey slime
Those monsters motherless and helpless lay,
Perishing only for the parent’s crime
Whose seed were they.
Those monsters motherless and helpless lay,
Perishing only for the parent’s crime
Whose seed were they.
Hours after, toward the dusk, our blithe small bird
Of Paradise, who has our hearts in keeping,
Was heard or seen, but hardly seen or heard,
For pity weeping.
Of Paradise, who has our hearts in keeping,
Was heard or seen, but hardly seen or heard,
For pity weeping.
He was so sorry, sitting still apart,
For the poor little crocodiles, he said.
Six years had given him, for an angel’s heart,
A child’s instead.
For the poor little crocodiles, he said.
Six years had given him, for an angel’s heart,
A child’s instead.
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