The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume III Part 38

If Nature, who allots our cup, Than her has made you stronger, wiser; It is that you, as you grow up, Should be her champion, her adviser.

It is the law that Hand intends, Which fram'd diversity of s.e.x; The man the woman still defends, The manly boy the girl protects.

WASPS IN A GARDEN

The wall-trees are laden with fruit; The grape, and the plum, and the pear, The peach, and the nect'rine, to suit Ev'ry taste in abundance, are there.

Yet all are not welcome to taste These kind bounties of nature; for one From her open-spread table must haste, To make room for a more favour'd son:

As that wasp will soon sadly perceive, Who has feasted awhile on a plum; And, his thirst thinking now to relieve, For a sweet liquid draught he is come.

He peeps in the narrow-mouth'd gla.s.s, Which depends from a branch of the tree; He ventures to creep down,--alas!

To be drown'd in that delicate sea.

"Ah say," my dear friend, "is it right, These gla.s.s bottles are hung upon trees: 'Midst a scene of inviting delight, Should we find such mementoes as these?"

"From such sights," said my friend, "we may draw A lesson, for look at that bee; Compar'd with the wasp which you saw, He will teach us what we ought to be.

"He in safety industriously plies His sweet honest work all the day, Then home with his earnings he flies; Nor in thieving his time wastes away."--

"O hush, nor with _fables_ deceive,"

I replied; "which, though pretty, can ne'er Make me cease for that insect to grieve, Who in agony still does appear.

"If a _simile_ ever you need, You are welcome to make a wasp do; But you ne'er should mix fiction indeed With things that are serious and true."

WHAT IS FANCY?

SISTER

I am to write three lines, and you Three others that will rhyme.

There--now I've done my task.

BROTHER

Three stupid lines as e'er I knew.

When you've the pen next time, Some Question of me ask.

SISTER

Then tell me, brother, and pray mind, Brother, you tell me true: What sort of thing is _fancy_?

BROTHER

By all that I can ever find, 'Tis something that is very new, And what no dunces _can see_.

SISTER

That is not half the way to tell What _fancy_ is about; So pray now tell me more.

BROTHER

Sister, I think 'twere quite as well That you should find it out; So think the matter o'er.

SISTER

It's what comes in our heads when we Play at "Let's make believe,"

And when we play at "Guessing."

BROTHER

And I have heard it said to be A talent often makes us grieve, And sometimes proves a blessing.

ANGER

Anger in its time and place May a.s.sume a kind of grace.

It must have some reason in it, And not last beyond a minute.

If to further lengths it go, It does into malice grow.

'Tis the difference that we see 'Twixt the Serpent and the Bee.

If the latter you provoke, It inflicts a hasty stroke, Puts you to some little pain, But it _never stings again_.

Close in tufted bush or brake Lurks the poison-swelled snake, Nursing up his cherish'd wrath.

In the purlieus of his path, In the cold, or in the warm, Mean him good, or mean him harm, Whensoever fate may bring you, The vile snake will _always sting you_.

BLINDNESS

In a stage-coach, where late I chanc'd to be, A little quiet girl my notice caught; I saw she look'd at nothing by the way, Her mind seem'd busy on some childish thought.

I with an old man's courtesy address'd The child, and call'd her pretty dark-eyed maid And bid her turn those pretty eyes and see The wide extended prospect. "Sir," she said,

"I cannot see the prospect, I am blind."

Never did tongue of child utter a sound So mournful, as her words fell on my ear.

Her mother then related how she found

Her child was sightless. On a fine bright day She saw her lay her needlework aside, And, as on such occasions mothers will, For leaving off her work began to chide.

"I'll do it when 'tis day-light, if you please; I cannot work, Mamma, now it is night."

The sun shone bright upon her when she spoke, And yet her eyes receiv'd no ray of light.

THE MIMIC HARLEQUIN

"I'll _make believe_, and fancy something strange: I will suppose I have the power to change And make all things unlike to what they were, To jump through windows and fly through the air, And quite confound all places and all times, Like Harlequins we see in Pantomimes.

These thread-papers my wooden sword must be, Nothing more like one I at present see.

And now all round this drawing-room I'll range And every thing I look at I will change.

Here's Mopsa, our old cat, shall be a bird; To a Poll Parrot she is now transferr'd.