Cassie and her toys
Ethel and I are pushing toward seventy but we have a new addition to the family. "Cassie". She’s five months old, been with us a little over a month, weighs a bit over four pounds—a tiny Yorkshire Terrier.
She’s training us and isn’t far from getting us where she wants us—the sweet rascal. But I’d been angry with her and ordered her to bed and off she went as fast as her little legs would carry her. Later I stuck my head into the room and there (I'm speaking the truth!), in her little bed, she had piled around her a collection of her favourite things. It stunned me!
I immediately thought of Coventry Patmore’s poem The Toys. Even the stern scholar and apostle of God’s holiness, P.T Forsyth, said of this poem, "It melts us." The boy had done what I saw Cassie do. He gathered around him the things that made him feel special. I can’t quite get to the bottom of the poem but it isn’t the first time it has bowed my heart and made me think of God.
- MY little son, who looked from thoughtful eyes
- And moved and spoke in quite grown-up wise,
- Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
- I struck him and dismissed
- With hard words and unkissed,
- His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
- Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep
- I visited his bed,
- But found him slumbering deep,
- With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet
- From his late sobbing wet.
- And I, with moan,
- Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
- For, on a table drawn beside his head,
- He had put, within his reach,
- A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
- A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
- And six or seven shells,
- A bottle with bluebells,
- And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
- To comfort his sad heart.
- So when that night I prayed
- To God, I wept, and said:
- Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,
- Not vexing Thee in death,
- And Thou rememberest of what toys
- We made our joys,
- How weakly understood
- Thy great commanded good,
- Then, fatherly not less
- Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
- Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
- "I will be sorry for their childishness."
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