Learning by Watching

An illustrated poem from the past

Imitation is more than the best flattery. It is also how the young learn from their elders. They may not yet see how best to form the motions, much less the words, but the imprint of the work begins to leave it’s mark, and the skills will come with time and tender caring. A father’s patience, in recognizing that these interruptions and distractions will be, in time, his greatest legacy, is a fine thing to see in a parent.

A New Poet

I write. He sits beside my chair,
And scribbles, too, in hushed delight;
He dips his pen in charméd air:
What is it he pretends to write?

He toils and toils; the paper gives
No clue to aught he thinks. What then?
His little heart is glad; he lives
The poems that he cannot pen.

Strange fancies throng that baby brain.
What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes!
He stops—reflects—and now again
His unrecording pen he plies.

It seems a satire on myself,—
These dreamy nothings scrawled in air,
This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf,
Wouldst drive thy father to despair?

Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind
Persists in hoping,—schemes and strives
That there may linger with our kind
Some memory of our little lives.

Beneath his rock i’ the early world
Smiling the naked hunter lay,
And sketched on horn the spear he hurled,
The urus which he made his prey.

Like him I strive in hope my rhymes
May keep my name a little while,—
O child, who knows how many times
We two have made the angels smile!

—William Canton