Classic Poem

She might have followed where our neighbours
On some far Alpine Peak keep house
Where mountains tower, avoiding only
The mountain that produced a mouse.

But the crabs called her, and she answered
She called them by their Christian names;
She smelt them in the type-writ story —
She even caught them in the Thames.

There finds she in her time of leisure,
For her too short, for us too long,
Anemones that need no water,
Urchins that know where they belong.

But stars are there as well as starfish,
Will she not find remembrance there?
See Charles filling Charles's Wain,
And Ursula the Little Bear.