Then I was clean and brave.
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain.
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.
MONDAY’S CHILD
Monday’s Child is full of grace.
Tuesday’s Child is fair or face.
Wednesday’s Child is loving and giving.
Thursday’s Child works hard for a living.
Friday’s Child is full of woe.
Saturday Child has far to go.
And the child that’s born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
IT WAS LONG AGO
(by Eleanor Farjoon)
I’ll tell you, shall I, something I remember.
Something that still means a great deal to me.
It was long ago.
A dusty road in summer I remember,
A mountain, and an old house, and a tree
That stood, you know, behind the house.
And an old woman I remember
In a red shawl with a grey cat on her knee
Humming under a tree.
She seemed the oldest thing I can remember
But then perhaps I was not more than three.
It was long ago.
I dragged on the dusty road, and I remember
How the old woman looked over the fence at me
And seemed to know how it felt to be three,
And called out, I remember:
“Do you like bilberries and cream for tea?”
I went under the tree.
And while she hummed and the cat purred
I remember how she filled a saucer with berries and cream for me
So long ago.
Such berries and such cream as I remember
I never had seen before and never see today, you know.
And that is almost all I can remember,
The house, the mountain, the grey cat on her knee,
Her red shawl and the tree.
And the taste of the berries, the feel of the sun I remember,
And the smell of everything that used to be so long ago.
Till the heat on the road outside again I remember,
And how the long dusty road seemed to have for me no end, you know.
That is the farthest thing I can remember
It won’t mean much to you. It does to me.
Then I grew up, you see.