ON A NEW YEARLING.

(SECOND WEEK.)

[Illustration:  Second Week.  Little 1892 grows rapidly, and begins to look about him.]

  My fire was low; my bills were high;
    My sip of punch was in its ladle;
  The clarion chimes were in the sky;
    The nascent year was in its cradle. 
  In sober prose to tell my tale,
    ’Twas New Year’s E’en, when, blind to danger,
  All older-fashioned nurses hail
    With joy “another little stranger.”

  The glass was in my hand—­but, wait,
    Methought, awhile!  ’Tis early toasting
  With paeans too precipitate
    A baby scarce an outline boasting: 
  One week at least of life must flit
    For me to match it with its brothers—­
  I’ll wager, like most infants, it
    Is wholly different from others.

  He frolics, latest of the lot,
    A family prolific reckoned;
  He occupies his tiny cot,
    The eighteen-hundred-ninety-second! 
  The pretty darling, gently nursed
    Of course, he lies, and fondly petted! 
  The eighteen-hundred-ninety-first
    Is not, I fancy, much regretted.

  You call him “fine”—­he’s great in size,
    And “promising”—­there issue from his
  Tough larynx quite stentorian cries;
    Such notes are haply notes of promise. 
  Look out for squalls, I tell you; soft
    And dove-like atoms more engage us;
  Your fin-de-siecle child is oft
    Loud, brazen, grasping, and rampageous.

  You bid me next his eyes adore;
    So “deep and wideawake,” they beckon;
  We’ve suffered lately on the score
    Of “deep and wideawake,” I reckon. 
  You term me an “unfeeling brute,”
    A “monster Herod-like,” and so on—­
  You may be right; I’ll not dispute;
    I’ll cease a brat’s good name to blow on.

  Who’ll read the bantling’s dawning days?—­
    Precocious shall he prove, and harass
  The world with inconvenient ways
    And lisped conundrums that embarrass? 
  (Such as Impressionists delight
    To offer each aesthetic gaper,
  And faddists hyper-Ibsenite
    Rejoice to perpetrate on paper?)

  Or, one of those young scamps perhaps
    Who love to rig their bogus bogies,
  And set their artful booby-traps
    For over-unsuspicious fogies? 
  Or haply, only commonplace—­
    A plodding sort of good apprentice,
  Who does his master’s will with grace,
    And hurries meekly where he sent is?

  And, when he grows apace, what blend
    Of genius, chivalry and daring,
  What virtues might our little friend
    Display to brighten souls despairing? 
  What quiet charities unknown,
    What modest, openhanded kindness,
  What tolerance in touch and tone
    For braggart human nature’s blindness?