Original Size — Medium-Size
Then he turned down the bed-clothes and quickly jumped in,
And granny’s big nightcap tied under his chin:
And he cuddled the clothes
Close up to his nose,
And was speedily off in a very nice doze;
For said he, “For Red Riding Hood if I’d have any
Respectable twist I must first digest granny.
For though at one meal I could eat child, pa, and mamma,
There’s a good deal of picking somehow about grandmamma!”
Little Red Riding Hood loitered along,
Stopping to hear while the thrush sang his song,
Or to list in the croft to the blackbird’s clear whistle,
Or to follow the feathery down of the thistle—
Or blowing in flocks
The seeds from the “clocks”
Of the bright dandelions, or searching the docks
For the burrs, whose chief trick
Is to catch and to stick
To one’s garments, no matter if thin ones or thick:
(Though it matters to you,
Because they come through—
Supposing your clothes are the former—and prick.
Why, foolish butterfly,
Will you skip, flutter, fly
Close by the child? You ‘re an idiot utter, fly!
She puts down the honey and cake in a trice,
And the latter’s immediately stolen by the mice.
But what does the latter at all to her matter:
She’s after that butterfly, mad as a hatter.
[It’s not clear to me
Why a hatter should be
Proverbially called a fit subject for De
Luncitico—so runs the writ—inquirendo;
But I fancy the hatter this harsh innuendo
Must, in the first place, to a humorous friend owe,
Who fain in the sneer would his gratitude smother
For a man who’s invariably felt for another.]
Through pastures and meads as the butterfly leads,
Red Riding Hood follows, and little she heeds
The orders and warning her mother that morning
Had given her, or even her grandmother’s needs.
But when she comes back once again to the track,
And finds the cake gone, she grows frightened. “Alack!”
She cries, “what a loss!
Won’t granny be cross,
To breakfast off nothing—with honey for sauce?”
Just then a glittering dragon-fly
On gauzy pinion darted by.
Oh, he was clad in burnished mail,
His wing a fairy galley’s sail,
And he was twice as big, I ween,
As the biggest butterfly she had seen.
Soon forgotten the honey’s;
She off with a run is
Where the dragon-fly glancing so bright in the sun is.
By ditches and hedges, by rushes and sedges,
By ponds full of reeds and all sorts of weeds,
By pools that are stagnant, and brooks full of waterbreaks,
She chases Libellula Eagerly. [Well, you’ll a-
Llow there must some
Awful punishment come
When her mother’s commands in this manner a daughter,
But conceive her concern
When, on her return,
She finds that an empty jar’s all she can earn.
For the ants had discovered it placed in a sunny spot,
And cleared all the honey, and left but the honey’s pot.
Said she, “Lack-a-day!
What will grandmother say?
And shan’t I get scolded for stopping to play!
I’d better get on without further delay!”
Resolution how vain! Again and again
She loiters in meadow, wood, highway, and lane—
Strays into the coppice
To pick the bright poppies,
Or climbs up the hedge for the nest that a-top is;
Or else she emerges
Where widely diverges
The forest’s long avenues—leafy green arches
Of beeches, of ashes, of elms and of larches,
Which she lingers beneath
To pick for a wreath
A bright trail of ivy, that some lofty stem on is,
Or with bluebells her apron to fill—or anemones;
Or to watch the quaint habits
And ways of the rabbits,
And the plans of the crows,
Who, as every one knows,
Establish their scouts
At certain look-outs,
To warn them of danger whenever they ‘ve doubts.
[As touching these rooks,
Natural History books
Declare that the thing to their greatest éclat’s The fact—which should win them the warmest applause—
That nothing they do is e’er done without caws.]
But now she has passed
Through the forest, and fast
Is approaching her grandmother’s cottage at last.
What excuse can she make
For the honey and cake?
At the thought of that scrape she’s beginning to quake.
She creeps through the garden,
Attempting to harden
Her heart, and declare she “Don’t care a brass farden.”
But, in spite of her trying,
She’s very near crying,
And asking her granny to grant her a pardon.
The knock is so faint, that the wolf’s scarce aware
That there’s any one knocking, but cries out, “Who’s there
“Red Riding Hood”—here on her speech broke a sob in—
“Come to see you.” Said wolf, “If you pull at the bobbin,
The latch will fly up!” So she opened the door,
And tottered with terrified feet o’er the floor.
Said wolf, “Where’s the cake
Mother promised to make?”
“Please, granny, to-day she’s not able to bake,
For love or for money.”
“Then where is my honey?”
“What makes you expect any, granny? How funny!”
Said Little Red Riding Hood, trying to smile,
Although in a terrible fright all the while.
“To send me no breakfast,” said wolf, “she was silly;
I ‘m feeling so hungry and faint, I’m quite chilly.
As you ‘ve brought me no food, you must warm me instead;
I ’ll take you in place of my breakfast in bed.
So take off your things, and, some help to your gran to be,
Jump into bed, just for once warming-pan to be.”
She takes off her clothes,
And into bed goes.
Old wolf keeps the counterpane up to his nose,
But the child sees with fear
That, now she’s so near,
Her grandmother’s looking remarkably queer.
She trembles with fright, and in sad perturbation,
Commences the following brief conversation: