The Children's Hour

I like poetry.  Always have.  While I was in college, Christopher Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd helped procure a girlfriend or two.  My fondness probably started with Mom and Dad tossing Theodor Geisel and Shel Silverstein my way.

Now I like to read poems to Autumn.  I don't think she's much of a poetry fan, but she doesn't seem to mind listening.  And I don't mind when she starts snoring.  Lately I've been reading to her from collections put together by Garrison Keillor.  If you've heard his 'Writer's Almanac', you'll know why I pick up these most often.  Anyway, they are not only good poems, they are especially good for folks who aren't much into poetry.  I can often get an emotion or two out of her as she slowly falls asleep.  Good poetry is nothing of the sort if it doesn't stir our emotions 

Anyway, it's been something of a long day.  A mostly good day, but a long one, and I'm afraid my brain is spent and my thoughts are elsewhere.

So I'm going to share a poem with you.  I hope you won't consider it cheating.  This is one of my mom's favorites.  No surprise seeing as she made her day's occupation the education those possessing little feet.  She made the children's hour last for decades, for most of her adult life...

The Children's Hour

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall stair, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair. A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sudden raid from the hall! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon In the round-tower of my heart. And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away!

And she's still doing it today.  Making voices sweeter and eyes merrier that is.  You have touched so many lives Mom, helped so many children grow into good and fine people.  Especially me Mom, especially me.

Mom, no matter what, you'll be in my heart forever, forever and a day.

Forever and a day.