Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks

Shuffle-Shoon and Amber-Locks

Original Text
Eugene Field, Lullaby-Land: Poems of Childhood (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904): 87-90.
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.
Publication Start Year
1904
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.
Rhyme