Scottish Poetry Selection
- A Wish for The Children

Violets


As a schoolteacher who retained a liking for children, Walter Wingate wrote a number of poems for and about children. This "Wish for the Children" has never been published before and the watercolour of violets above was painted by the author.


A Wish for The Children

Through the summer paradise
          May their golden hours
Flit like wildered butterflies
          In a maze of flowers!
Pleasure wake them morn by morn;
Roses deck them from the thorn:
Poppies crown them from the corn;
Night with her enchanted horn
Woo them like a Hamelin band
          Over vale and steep
To a fairer wonderland
          Through the gates of sleep;
Till the pools along the shore
Can enrich them nothing more;
Till the meadows jeweled floor
Weary with familiar love;
Till the home-thought comes to croon
          Sweetly ‘oer the seas
As to languid afternoon
          Comes the sweet sea-breeze!

Meaning of unusual words:
Hamelin - refers to the Pied Piper of Hamlin

Return to the Index of Walter Wingate Poems or the General Index of Scottish Poetry




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