LONDON PRIDE AND GOLDEN ROD- ARTWORK

 LONDON PRIDE AND GOLDEN ROD. - "MAY AND SEPTEMBER."  

By W.G.S. 

Parnassus and the fly entrapping Sun-dews. 

Never since the world began has the marriage knot proved agreeable when May and September have been allied, for-

 Youth is full of pleasure- 

Age is full of care. & c.  

The strong and lusty bridegroom loves best a youthful bride, and the young wife a husband in the springtime of his manhood. But there is a far purer love maintained between parents and children, a love that autumn and winter and grey hairs only render stronger and truer. Nothing can exceed the unalloyed purity of the deep confiding, unspotted love, shown by a little child to its parents, a love that binds father and mother together with bonds ten thousand times stronger than any ever thought of on the marriage day. If it be possible to conceive of parents being brought still closer together than by their childrens love, it is in the blank and helpless despair that follows the death sleep of an angel little one. 

Come to me, O ye children, 

For I hear you at your play, 

And the questions that perplexed me 

Have vanished quite away. 

For what are all our contrivings,

And the wisdom of our books, 

When compared with your caresses 

And the gladness of your looks? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said; 

For ye are living poems, 

And all the rest are dead. 

References:

THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON ALMANACK FOR 1868