It is interesting to try to determine just how a great poet makes us feel so strongly the thing that he tells us. In this case Tennyson thinks of a mother in England and a father who is somewhere in the West, out on the broad Atlantic, but is coming home to his little one. The mother dreams only of the home-coming of her husband, and she wishes the baby to learn to love its father as much as she does, so as she sings the little one to sleep, she pours out her love for both in beautiful melody. To express this mother-love and anxious care the poet has chosen simple words that have rich, musical sounds, that can be spoken easily and smoothly and that linger on the tongue. He speaks of the sea, the gentle wind, the rolling waters, the dying moon and the silver sails, all of which call up ideas that rest us and make us happy, and then with rare skill he arranges the words so that when we read the lines we can feel the gentle rocking movement that lulls the little one, the pretty one into its gentle slumbers. CHILDHOOD[124-1] _By_ DONALD G. MITCHELL Isabel and I--she is my cousin, and is seven years old, and I am ten--are sitting together on the bank of a stream, under an oak tree that leans half way over to the water. I am much stronger than she, and taller by a head. I hold in my hands a little alder rod, with which I am fishing for the roach and minnows, that play in the pool below us. She is watching the cork tossing on the water, or playing with the captured fish that lie upon the bank. She has auburn ringlets that fall down upon her shoulders; and her straw hat lies back upon them, held only by the strip of ribbon, that passes under her chin. But the sun does not shine upon her head; for the oak tree above us is full of leaves; and only here and there, a dimple of the sunlight plays upon the pool, where I am fishing. Her eye is hazel, and bright; and now and then she turns it on me with a look of girlish curiosity, as I lift up my rod--and again in playful menace, as she grasps in her little fingers one of the dead fish, and threatens to throw it back upon the stream. Her little feet hang over the edge of the bank; and from time to time, she reaches down to dip her toe in the water; and laughs a girlish laugh of defiance, as I scold her for frightening away the fishes. "Bella," I say, "what if you should tumble in the river?" "But I won't." "Yes, but if you should?" [Illustration: SHE REACHES DOWN TO DIP HER TOE] "Why then you would pull me out." "But if I wouldn't pull you out?" "But I know you would; wouldn't you, Paul?" "What makes you think so, Bella?" "Because you love Bella." "How do you know I love Bella?" "Because once you told me so; and because you pick flowers for me that I cannot reach; and because you let me take your rod, when you have a fish upon it." "But that's no reason, Bella." "Then what is, Paul?"