Читать книгу Rhymes and Jingles - Mary Mapes Dodge - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Little green Hummer

Was born in the summer;

His coat was as bright

As the emerald's light.

Short was his song,

Though his bill it was long;

His weight altogether

Not more than a feather.

From dipping his head

In the sunset red,

And gilding his side

In its fiery tide,

He gleamed like a jewel,

And darted around,

'Twixt sunlight and starlight,

Ne'er touching the ground.

Now over a blossom,

Now under, now in it;

Here, there, and everywhere,

All in a minute.

Ah! never he cared

Who wondered and stared—

His life was completeness

Of pleasure and sweetness;

He revelled in lightness,

In fleetness and brightness,

This sweet little Hummer

That came with the summer.

————————

Gluck! gluck! From under a log,

Squatting and leaping, comes Flucky the Frog.

Wide is his mouth, and spreading his toes;

Very elastic and shiny his clothes;

Though lofty his jumpings and brazen his stare,

He sees not the Hummer that flits in the air.

————————

A lad of Nansook

A balsam-pod took,

And he pressed the ends with a will;

The sudden report

Was capital sport,

And the seeds they are flying still.

————————

Oh, I'd search the world over

For one four-leaved clover!

Bend low, pretty grass, bend low!

Jump, little crickets! and tumble, you bees!

Green little grasshoppers, limber your knees!

There's one hidden somewhere, I know.

————————

Sunlight or starlight,

Tilly, my nilly,

Find me a stem

Of the tiger-lily;

I'll fill it full

From the fountain there

And spirt the water

Over your hair!

————————

"Good Mistress Sundial, what's the hour?"

"Alack! to tell you I haven't power.

It rains; and I only can work, you see,

When the sun is casting his light upon me.

I'm nothing at all but a senseless block

Whenever his beautiful rays depart;

But ask my neighbor, the Four-o'clock;

She carries the time o' day in her heart."

————————

Some one in the garden murmurs all the day;

Some one in the garden moans the night away;

Deep in the pine-trees, hidden from our sight,

He murmurs all day, and moans all the night.

————————

Wire-locks, Curly-pate, Tangle, and Floss,

To make some fine curls they were quite at a loss,

Till they found them a field of the bright dandelion,

And made the green ringlets with only half trying.

————————

Old Bum of Bumbleby bumped his nose,

Trying to light on a damask rose;

He bumped his nose, but he didn't care

As he pitched about in the dizzy air.

Whenever he tried to his love to fly,

He would shoot ahead and pass her by;

So he tumbled at last on a larkspur near,

And buzzed his business into her ear.

————————

Under the willow, out of the rain,

We'll string us many a lilac chain,

Shining and sweet, and fair to see,

Some for my darling and some for me.

————————

Little Polly, always clever,

Takes a leaf of live-forever;

Before you know it

You see her blow it,

A gossamer sack

With a velvet back.

How big it grows

As she puffs and blows!

But have a care,

It is full of air.

Ere Polly will stop

It'll crack with a pop;

And that's the end of the live-forever;

But little Polly is very clever.

————————