SEVEN NURSERY SONGS

OLD Lady Fly-Away Lost her temper, night and day, Took the bright moon’s broom— Swept round the attic room. “Dear me, where can it be? Not a temper can I see!” Sighed the Moon upon the stair: “Always look to see, dear, When you ‘put your foot down,’ Lest it crushes Babylon; Try to get it nearer home, In fields of clover or in Rome!” Old Lady Fly-Away Knew her temper would not stay, So pretended not to hear— Sweeping for it on the stair.

GREAT Snoring and Norwich A dish of pease porridge! The clock of Troy town Strikes one o’clock; brown Honey-bees in the clover Are half-the-seas-over, And Time is a-boring From here to Great Snoring. But Time, the grey mouse, Can’t wake up the house, For old King Priam Is sleepy as I am!

WHEN I should be at work, instead I lie and kick for fun, in bed: Down the narrow rails, hear trains Go quick as other people’s brains— Hump their backs and snore and growl, Grumble, rumble, tumble, prowl— Bearing people, pink as pigs, Through water-clear fields dancing jigs. Like a whale among my pillows Dash I, splash I, sheets in billows As the trains toss spangled seas, Like bright flags on the tusks of these. How I envy those at work When I can lie in bed and shirk.

“A PENNY fare to Babylon, A penny for each thought!” “Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am, Can’t be bought! The Sun gives pots of money, The Moon, her bread and honey, When humming like a clover-field I go up to town. Whitened by the Moon’s flour, All the birds I own, Lest they be baked into a pie, Are flown, dear, flown. Though you whistle in the corridors That dance into my brain— Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am, They will not come again.”

PANTALOON jumps in his bright Butcher’s shop, where red and white Meat hangs up like clown’s attire— Laughs as shrill as grass or fire. In his house sits Il Dottore, In the rickety top story Plays a mandoline to please Coral bells on cherry trees.... But the bees have left his bonnet For the meat; they buzz upon it— Goldy summer lights—they hover Like the bees upon red clover, Flying straight into the shop, Full of facts, where theories stop.

THE King of China’s daughter, She never would love me Though I hung my cap and bells upon Her nutmeg tree. For oranges and lemons, The stars in bright blue air, (I stole them long ago, my dear) Were dangling there. The Moon did give me silver pence, The Sun did give me gold, And both together softly blew And made my porridge cold; But the King of China’s daughter Pretended not to see When I hung my cap and bells upon Her nutmeg tree.

OLD King Ptolemy Climbed the stair Into the attic Of Anywhere. Old King Ptolemy Sulked to bed; Maids cleared up his toys— “Broken,” they said. “The King’s in a temper, The King’s in a pet,” Wriggling their necks like geese— “Oh, what a fret!” The Struwwelpeter Round-eyed Sun, Rocked on his rocking-horse Half in fun,— Rocked on the landing, Rocked on the stair: “Babylon’s empty, The cupboard is bare.... King Ptolemy’s snoring Sounds on the breeze Like the sound of fruit growing On mulberry trees.”