The Comrades :: :: University of Virginia Library

Yes, you may let them creep about the rug.
And stir the fire! Aha! that's bright and snug.
To think these mites—ay, nurse, unfold the screen!—
Should be as ancient as the Miocene;
That ages back beneath a palm-tree's shade
These rosy little quadrupeds have played,
Have cried for moons or mammoths, and have blacked
Their faces round the Drift Man's fire—in fact,
That ever since the articulate race began
These babes have been the joy and plague of man!

Unnoticed by historian and sage,
These bright-eyed chits have been from age to age
The one supreme majority. I find
Mankind hath been their slaves, and womankind
Their worshippers; and both have lived in dread
Of time and tyrants, toiled and wept and bled,
Because of some quaint elves they called their own.
Had little ones in Egypt been unknown,
No Pharaoh would have had the power, methinks,
To pile the Pyramids or carve the Sphinx.

Take them to bed, nurse; but before she goes
Papa must toast his little woman's toes.
Strange that such feeble hands and feet as these
Have sped the lamp-race of the centuries!