| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| A New Poet |
| | | William Canton (b. 1845) |
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| I WRITE. He sits beside my chair, | |
| And scribbles, too, in hushed delight; | |
| He dips his pen in charméd air: | |
| What is it he pretends to write? | |
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| He toils and toils; the paper gives | 5 |
| No clue to aught he thinks. What then? | |
| His little heart is glad; he lives | |
| The poems that he cannot pen. | |
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| Strange fancies throng that baby brain. | |
| What grave, sweet looks! What earnest eyes! | 10 |
| He stops—reflects—and now again | |
| His unrecording pen he plies. | |
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| It seems a satire on myself,— | |
| These dreamy nothings scrawled in air, | |
| This thought, this work! Oh tricksy elf, | 15 |
| Wouldst drive thy father to despair? | |
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| Despair! Ah, no; the heart, the mind | |
| Persists in hoping,—schemes and strives | |
| That there may linger with our kind | |
| Some memory of our little lives. | 20 |
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| Beneath his rock i’ the early world | |
| Smiling the naked hunter lay, | |
| And sketched on horn the spear he hurled, | |
| The urus which he made his prey. | |
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| Like him I strive in hope my rhymes | 25 |
| May keep my name a little while,— | |
| O child, who knows how many times | |
| We two have made the angels smile! | |
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