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A quaint recitative of his own, which he generally contrived to vary
each night, was the song, a loving croon of sleep and rest. The
brotherhood of rest, one might name his theme for grown-up folk; as in
the morning, we afterwards learnt, he is wont to sing them another
little song of the brotherhood of work; the aim of his whole beautiful
effort for them being to fill their hearts with a sense of the
brotherhood of all living things--flowers, butterflies, bees and birds,
the milk-boy, the policeman, the man at the crossing, the grocer's pony,
all within the circle of their little lives, as living and working in
one great _camaraderie_. Sometimes he would extemporise a little rhyme
for them, filling it out with his clear, happy voice, and that tender
pantomime that comes so naturally to a man who not merely loves
children--for who is there that does not?--but one born with the
instinct for intercourse with them. To those not so born it is as
difficult to enter into the life and prattle of birds. I have once or
twice crept outside the bedroom door when neither children nor George
thought of eavesdroppers, and the following little songs are impressions
from memory of his. You must imagine them chanted by a voice full of the
infinite tenderness of fatherhood, and even then you will but dimly
realise the music they have as he sings them. I run the risk of his
forgiving my printing them here:--
MORNING SONG.
Morning comes to little eyes,
Wakens birds and butterflies,
Bids the flower uplift his head,
Calls the whole round world from bed.
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