free-verse83 lines
John
by R. C. LehmannHe's a boy,
And that's the long and (chiefly) the short of it,
And the point of it and the wonderful sport of it;
A two-year-old with a taste for a toy,
And two chubby fists to clutch it and grasp it,
And two fat arms to embrace it and clasp it;
And a short stout couple of sturdy legs
As hard and as smooth as ostrich eggs;
And a jolly round head, so fairly round
You could easily roll it,
Or take it and bowl it
With never a bump along the ground.
And, as to his cheeks, they're also fat -
I've seen them in ancient prints like that,
Where a wind-boy high
In a cloudy sky
Is puffing away for all he's worth,
Uprooting the trees
With a reckless breeze,
And strewing them over the patient earth,
Or raising a storm to wreck the ships
With the work of his lungs and cheeks and lips.
Take a look at his eyes; I put it to you,
Were ever two eyes more truly blue?
If you went and worried the whole world through
You'd never discover a bluer blue;
I doubt if you'd find a blue so true
In the coats and scarves of a Cambridge crew.
And his hair
Is as fair
As a pretty girl's,
But it's right for a boy with its crisp, short curls
All a-gleam, as he struts about
With a laugh and a shout,
To summon his sister-slaves to him
For his joyous Majesty's careless whim.
But now, as, after a stand, he budges,
And sets to work and solemnly trudges,
Out from a bush there springs full tilt
His four-legged playmate - and John is spilt.
She's a young dog and a strong dog
And a tall dog and a long dog,
A Danish lady of high degree,
Black coat, kind eye and a stride that's free.
And out she came
Like a burst of flame,
And John,
As he trudged and strutted
Sturdily on,
Was blindly butted,
And, all his dignity spent and gone,
On a patch of clover
Was tumbled over,
His two short legs having failed to score
In a sudden match against Lufra's four.
But we picked him up
And we brushed him down,
And he rated the pup
With a dreadful frown;
And then he laughed and he went and hugged her,
Seized her tail in his fist and tugged her,
And so, with a sister's hand to guide him,
Continued his march with the dog beside him.
And soon he waggles his way upstairs -
He does it alone, though he finds it steep.
He is stripped and gowned, and he says his prayers,
And he condescends
To admit his friends
To a lev'e before he goes to sleep.
He thrones it there
With a battered bear
And a tattered monkey to form his Court,
And, having come to the end of day,
Conceives that this is the time for play
And every possible kind of sport.
But at last, tucked in for the hundredth time,
He babbles a bit of nursery rhyme,
And on the bed
Droops his curly round head,
Gives one long sigh of unalloyed content
Over a day so well, so proudly spent,
Resigned at last to listen and obey,
And so begins to breathe his quiet night away.