Punch: Punch (21.1851)

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PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE CINDERELLA OF 1851.

THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

TN the workhouse school-room, choky and small,
That looks out on the workhouse wall,
Sit the pauper children, drearily,

Under the pauper mistress' rule,
Mumbling, and stumbling, and stuttering wearily,

Over the tasks of the workhouse school;
While the sun-light smites uncheerily
Sodden faces, blank of thinking,
Eyes that cannot keep from blinking,
Little bodies, sore and sinking,
That scarce hold up on bench and stool.

But on the side that's out of the sun,
In the furthest corner, and darkest one,
Two little pauper heads are mingling

Their scanty growth of pauper curls,—
Two little pauper faces tingling,—

Two pair of pauper eyes rain pearls,
As two little hands go slowly singling

The sense, word by word, of those tattered pages,
Hoary and brown with the thumbing of ages.
What is the lesson that so engages
The thoughts of those little pauper girls ?

Never, I ween, was so eager look
Easten'd on Primer or Spelling-book ;
No—'tis the school-room's hidden treasure,

Bann'd and banish'd, but loved the more,—
The book of mystery, awe, and pleasure,—

The glorious book of fairy lore,
That charms even pauper childhood's leisure, _
With its marvellous tales of dwarf and giant,
Of ladies distraught, and knights defiant, _
And a world of wonder that moves compliant
To the waving wand of the fairy corps.

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