575. Letty’s Globe

Charles Tennyson Turner (1808—1879)

  WHEN Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,

  And her young artless words began to flow,

  One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere

  Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

  By tint and outline, all its sea and land.

  She patted all the world; old empires peep’d

  Between her baby fingers; her soft hand

  Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,

  And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss;

  But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye

  On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—

  ‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’

  And while she hid all England with a kiss,

  Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.