| |
| HO, Giant! This is I! | |
| I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky! | |
| La—but it’s lovely, up so high! | |
| |
| This is how I came—I put | |
| There my knee, here my foot, | 5 |
| Up and up, from shoot to shoot; | |
| And the blessed bean-stalk thinning | |
| Like the mischief all the time, | |
| Till it took me rocking, spinning, | |
| In a dizzy, sunny circle, | 10 |
| Making angles with the root, | |
| Far and out above the cackle | |
| Of the city I was born in; | |
| Till the little dirty city, | |
| In the light so sheer and sunny, | 15 |
| Shone as dazzling bright and pretty | |
| As the money that you find | |
| In a dream of finding money— | |
| What a wind! what a morning!— | |
| Till the tiny, shiny city, | 20 |
| When I shot a glance below | |
| Shaken with a giddy laughter | |
| Sick and blissfully afraid, | |
| Was a dew-drop on a blade, | |
| And a pair of moments after | 25 |
| Was the whirling guess I made; | |
| And the wind was like a whip | |
| Cracking past my icy ears, | |
| And my hair stood out behind, | |
| And my eyes were full of tears, | 30 |
| Wide-open and cold, | |
| More tears than they could hold; | |
| The wind was blowing so, | |
| And my teeth were in a row, | |
| Dry and grinning, | 35 |
| And I felt my foot slip, | |
| And I scratched the wind and whined, | |
| And I clutched the stalk and jabbered | |
| With my eyes shut blind— | |
| What a wind: what a wind! | 40 |
| |
| Your broad sky, Giant, | |
| Is the shelf of a cupboard. | |
| I make bean-stalks—I’m | |
| A builder like yourself; | |
| But bean-stalks is my trade— | 45 |
| I couldn’t make a shelf, | |
| Don’t know how they’re made. | |
| Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant— | |
| La, what a climb! | |
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