Amidst fair gardens long ago
Beneath a changing sky,
There stood a castle, while below
A stream flowed slowly by.
A goodly man of high degree
Lived with his lady there;
And time and fate had brought them three
Fair sons with joy and care.
These boys played by the river’s rim;
Alas one autumn day
It chanced while none was watching him
The youngest son at play
Fell in a deep and muddy pool;
The yells that did resound
Would make it clear to any fool
That someone might be drowned.
The father grabbed a handy hook
And ran his best; before
He reached the pool, the colored cook
Had brought the boy to shore.
The father held him downside up,
And rolled him round and round;
He yelled--joy filled the father’s cup--
He couldn’t yell if drowned.
A joyful spanking, then a bath,
Dry clothes; when he came through,
Though deeply stirred to rosy wrath,
He seemed as good as new.
The father pondered long--then sent
A note to Zeus which said;
“In general the government
Has had an honest head.
But ’gainst one thing I now protest;
The waters everywhere
In north and south and east and west
Are left completely bare.”
Great Zeus had been in politics
For years and years and years;
His term approached its close, and kicks
Like this aroused his fears
That reelection now might fail.
He told Jack Frost to plan
Whatever measure might avail
To satisfy the man.
And so Jack Frost invented ice,
And spread it clear and thin
Upon the waters; this device
Kept folks from falling in.
Alas, he did not dare to go
Far in the temperate zone;
The warm South Wind, his bitter foe,
Might catch him there alone.
And now when Spring comes back in May,
With robins in her train,
Jack Frost, the coward, flees away
And waits for Winter’s reign.
The ice without his constant care,
Grown thin and weak and brown,
Runs off and leaves the water bare,
And anyone may drown.