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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse  »  Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879)

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Letty’s Globe

Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879)

WHEN Letty had scarce pass’d her third glad year,

And her young artless words began to flow,

One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere

Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.

She patted all the world; old empires peep’d

Between her baby fingers; her soft hand

Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap’d,

And laugh’d and prattled in her world-wide bliss;

But when we turn’d her sweet unlearnèd eye

On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry—

‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’

And while she hid all England with a kiss,

Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.