this morning,) by
no less a personage than her Most Gracious Majesty THE QUEEN. 
Sleep, Brother Donkeys, sleep!  But I fancy you’re sleeping already,
for you make no reply;
Not a quiver of your ears, not a sign from your motionless drooping
noses, dark against the dusky night sky. 
As black and immovable as the silent fir-trees you solemnly
slumber beneath,
Whilst I wakefully meditate on a glorious past, and painfully ponder
the future, as the dews fall over the Heath.

[Footnote 6:  Heath bed-straw (Galium Saxatile).  This white-flowered
bed-straw grows profusely on Hampstead Heath.]

THE PROMISE.

CHILD.

Five blue eggs hatching,
With bright eyes watching,
Little brown mother, you sit on your nest.

BIRD.

Oh! pass me blindly,
Oh! spare me kindly,
Pity my terror, and leave me to rest.

CHORUS OF CHILDREN.

Hush! hush! hush! 
’Tis a poor mother thrush. 
When the blue eggs hatch, the brown birds will sing—­
This is a promise made in the Spring.

CHILD.

Five speckled thrushes
In leafy bushes
Singing sweet songs to the hot Summer sky. 
In and out twitting,
Here and there flitting,
Happy is life as the long days go by.

CHORUS.

Hush! hush! hush! 
’Tis the song of the thrush: 
Hatched are the blue eggs; the brown birds do sing—­
Keeping the promise made in the Spring.

Published in Aunt Judy’s Magazine, July 1866, with music by
Alexander Ewing.

CONVALESCENCE.

Hold my hand, little Sister, and nurse my head, whilst I try to
remember the word,
What was it?—­that the doctor says is now fairly established both
in me and my bird. 
C-O-N-con, with a con, S-T-A-N-stan, with a stan—­No!  That’s
Constantinople, that is
The capital of the country where rhubarb-and-magnesia comes from, and
I wish they would keep it in that country, and not send
it to this. 
C-O-N-con—­how my head swims!  Now I’ve got it! 
C-O-N-V-A-L-E-S-C-E-N-C-E.
Convalescence! And that’s what the doctor says is now fairly
established both in my blackbird and me. 
He says it means that you are better, and that you’ll be well
by and by. 
And so the Sea-captain says, and he says we ought to be friends,
because we’re both convalescents—­at least we’re all three
convalescents, my blackbird, and the Captain and I.
He’s a sea-captain, not a land-captain, but, all the same, he was
in the war,
And he fought,—­for I asked him,—­and he’s been ill ever since, and
that’s why he’s not afloat, but ashore;
And why somebody else has got his ship; and she behaved so beautifully
in the battle, and he loves her quite as much as his wife,
and rather better than the rest of his