The Eighth Sin/To Jessie Willcox Smith
(In gratitude for her illustrations of A Child's Garden of Verses.)
He would have said, with radiant face,"Dear Lady, in some fairy placeSome garden where (without a nurse)They played their shadowy games in verse,You must have met my bairns aloneAnd smiled, and took them for your own.
"They were more ragged then, perhaps,They did not know the joy of laps,A very lonely life they ledThey never had been tucked in bed.In spite of all their merry laughterThey badly needed looking after!
"These children of my wistful dreamsThe magic of your brush now seemsTo bring to life—I recogniseThe golden heads, the dark brown eyes,The dainty frocks, the slin bare legsAnd all that love-of-children begs.
"The bairns art yours as much as mineAnd so to you I now resignA half of all that fund of gleeThat they have always brought to me.But on one thing they will insist—They never sleep till they've been kissed!P.S.—I note with grateful joyYou've made the oldest one a boy!"
Such words as these, but with more grace, He would have said.