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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  901 Mother Goose Sonnets

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Harriet S.Morgridge

901 Mother Goose Sonnets

JACK AND JILL

AH, Jack it was, and with him little Jill,

Of the same age and size, a neighbor’s daughter,

Who on a breezy morning climbed the hill

To fetch down to the house a pail of water.

Jack put his best foot foremost on that day,—

Vaulting ambition we have seen before,—

He stepped too far, of course, and soon he lay

In the vile path, his little crown so sore!

The next act in the tragedy was played

By Jill, whose eager foothold, too, was brief.

Epitome of life, that boy and maid

Together hoped, together came to grief.

And in their simple story lies concealed

The germ of half that ’s plucked in fiction’s field.

SIMPLE SIMON

A BOY named Simon sojourned in a dale;

Some said that he was simple, but I ’m sure

That he was nothing less than simon pure;

They thought him so because, forsooth, a whale

He tried to catch in Mother’s water-pail.

Ah! little boy, timid, composed, demure,—

He had imagination. Yet endure

Defeat he could, for he of course did fail.

But there are Simons of a larger growth,

Who, too, in shallow waters fish for whales,

And when they fail they are “unfortunate.”

If the small boy is simple, then are both,

And the big Simon more, who often rails

At what he calls ill luck or unkind fate.