The Children's Hour<br /><br />Between the dark and the daylight,<br />When the night is beginning to lower,<br />Comes a pause in the day's occupations,<br />That is known as the Children's Hour.<br /><br />I hear in the chamber above me<br />The patter of little feet,<br />The sound of a door that is opened,<br />And voices soft and sweet.<br /><br />From my study I see in the lamplight,<br />Descending the broad hall stair,<br />Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,<br />And Edith with golden hair.<br /><br />A whisper, and then a silence:<br />Yet I know by their merry eyes<br />They are plotting and planning together<br />To take me by surprise.<br /><br />A sudden rush from the stairway,<br />A sudden raid from the hall!<br />By three doors left unguarded<br />They enter my castle wall!<br /><br />They climb up into my turret<br />O'er the arms and back of my chair;<br />If I try to escape, they surround me;<br />They seem to be everywhere.<br /><br />They almost devour me with kisses,<br />Their arms about me entwine,<br />Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen<br />In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!<br /><br />Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,<br />Because you have scaled the wall,<br />Such an old mustache as I am<br />Is not a match for you all!<br /><br />I have you fast in my fortress,<br />And will not let you depart,<br />But put you down into the dungeon<br />In the round-tower of my heart.<br /><br />And there will I keep you forever,<br />Yes, forever and a day,<br />Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,<br />And moulder in dust away!