Letty’s Globe

Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879)

WHEN Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,

And her young, artless words began to flow,

One day we gave the child a colored sphere

Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.

She patted all the world; old empires peeped

Between her baby fingers; her soft hand

Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped,

And laughed and prattled in her world-wide bliss;

But when we turned her sweet unlearnèd eye

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!