Eugene Field (1850-1895)
Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks
1Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks
2Sit together, building blocks;
3 Shuffle-Shoon is old and grey,
4 Amber-Locks a little child,
5 But together at their play
6 Age and Youth are reconciled,
7And with sympathetic glee
8Build their castles fair to see.
9"When I grow to be a man"
10(So the wee one's prattle ran),
11 "I shall build a castle so--
12 With a gateway broad and grand;
13 Here a pretty vine shall grow,
14 There a soldier guard shall stand;
15And the tower shall be so high,
16Folks will wonder, by-and-by!"
17Shuffle-Shoon quoth: "Yes, I know;
18Thus I builded long ago!
19 Here a gate and there a wall,
20 Here a window, there a door;
21 Here a steeple wondrous tall
22 Riseth ever more and more!
23But the years have levelled low
24What I builded long ago!"
25So they gossip at their play,
26Heedless of the fleeting day;
27 One speaks of the Long Ago
28 Where his dead hopes buried lie;
29 One with chubby cheeks aglow
30 Prattleth of the By-and-By;
31Side by side, they build their blocks--
32Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Eugene Field, Lullaby-Land: Poems of Childhood (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904): 87-90.
First publication date:
1904
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/27
Rhyme: aabcbcbdd
Other poems by Eugene Field
