To Children
Here is a frame for you that has not a picture upon it.
Look, it is round like the sun; around it you see a wreath of oak leaves, but here are no acorns, and instead of berries, grapes have been used; good fat grapes that hang in small golden-white clusters that look so juicy.
Below come four small green tendrils; those may represent bosom strings.
In the middle, where you usually put the portrait that one wishes to look at, there is a round white place.
Here, then, is the frame. It is made of paper, and there is a clock behind it, and the branches and leaves and tendrils are all so artistically arranged that it looks quite beautiful when held against the light.
Imagine that the picture which the round white place is to contain, is a small poem; then I will tell you that the verses here follow, and we might call the title of the poem.
The Little Lost Balloon.
Fifty balloons! they said this morning,
Fifty balloons to fly aloft,
Blue, and red, and white, and orange,
Plain or striped with colors soft,
Fifty like big shining flowers
In the clear light of sunny hours.
Yes, fifty of us there ballooning
Soon were floating high in air,
Frank, and Big Aunt T, and others,
Not so round, a little square,
And a circus lady also went,
Though the Father had said, No; she was bent.
Oh to be blown away like people
Who get blown away when it rains!
But should we go on forever?
And would we never meet again?
All at once I began to cry,
Though they said: Farther! Higher! Fly!
Then it came on to rain in earnest,
We should be blown away for true!
Then the whole flock fell in confusion
Down upon Terrible Cockatoo.
Upon the wickedest bird alive,
Now hear, I fly: Now cry, I cry!
Now we’re in Cockatoo’s clutches,
Close squeezed we are together,
I cannot breathe, there’s no shouting banter,
And the night passes on like a feather,
Then forty-eight bursts and breaks to bits,
Only Frank with me now like two nuts we sits.