And so The Brook--the Cloud--the Snow, Got its own way after so many days, And did put on a human form and face. But whether The situation pleased it altogether; If it is nice To be a man of snow and ice; Whether it feels Painful, when one congeals; How this man felt When he began to melt; Whether he wore his human form and face With any extraordinary grace; If many mortals fell As victims to the spell; Or if, As he stood, stark and stiff, With a bare broomstick in his arms, And not a trace of transcendental charms, That man of snow Grew wise enough to know That the Brook's hopes were but a Poet's dream, And well content to be again a stream, On the first sunny day, Flowed quietly away; Or what the end was--You must ask the Poet, I don't know it. [Illustration] A SOLDIER'S CHILDREN. Our home used to be in a hut in the dear old Camp, with lots of bands and trumpets and bugles and Dead Marches, and three times a day there was a gun, But now we live in View Villa at the top of the village, and it isn't nearly such fun. We never see any soldiers, except one day we saw a Volunteer, and we ran after him as hard as ever we could go, for we thought he looked rather brave; But there's only been one funeral since we came, an ugly black thing with no Dead March or Union Jack, and not even a firing party at the grave. There is a man in uniform to bring the letters, but he's nothing like our old Orderly, Brown; I told him, through the hedge, "Your facings are dirty, and you'd have to wear your belt if my father was at home," and oh, how he did frown! But things can't be expected to go right when Old Father's away, and he's gone to the war; Which is why we play at soldiers and fighting battles more than ever we did before. And I try to keep things together: every morning I have a parade of myself and Dick, To see that we are clean, and to drill him and do sword-exercise with poor Grandpapa's stick. Grandpapa's dead, so he doesn't want it now, and Dick's too young for a real tin sword like mine: He's so young he won't make up his mind whether he'll go into the Artillery or the Line. I want him to be a gunner, for his frock's dark blue, and Captain Powder gave us a wooden gun with an elastic that shoots quite a big ball. It's nonsense Dick's saying he'd like to be a Chaplain, for that's not being a soldier at all. Besides, he always wants to be Drum-Major when we've funerals, to