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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  693. Letty’s Globe

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Charles Tennyson Turner. 1808–1879

693. Letty’s Globe

WHEN Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year, 
  And her young artless words began to flow, 
One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere 
  Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, 
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.         5
  She patted all the world; old empires peep’d 
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand 
  Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d, 
  And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss; 
But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye  10
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry— 
‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’ 
  And while she hid all England with a kiss, 
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.