Added to this was the fact that as her children grew, they filled and educated the domestic side of her life. One of her most attractive poems is that in which she describes herself as going out for exercise on a rainy day and walking round her house, looking up each time at the window where her children were watching with merry eagerness for the successive glimpses of her. This is the poem I mean:— THE HEART’S ASTRONOMY This evening, as the twilight fell, My younger children watched for me; Like cherubs in the window framed, I saw the smiling group of three. While round and round the house I trudged, Intent to walk a weary mile, Oft as I passed within their range, The little things would beck and smile. They watched me, as Astronomers, Whose business lies in heaven afar, Await, beside the slanting glass, The reappearance of a star. Not so, not so, my pretty ones! Seek stars in yonder cloudless sky, But mark no steadfast path for me,— A comet dire and strange am I. ... And ye, beloved ones, when ye know What wild, erratic natures are, Pray that the laws of heavenly force Would hold and guide the Mother star. I remember well that household of young people in successive summers at Newport, as they grew towards maturity; how they in turn came back from school and college, each with individual tastes and gifts, full of life, singing, dancing, reciting, poetizing, and one of them, at least, with a talent for cookery which delighted all Newport; then their wooings and marriages, always happy; their lives always busy; their temperaments so varied. These are the influences under which “wild erratic natures” grow calm.