"I have a little sister,

They call her peep, peep;

She wades through the water,

Deep, deep, deep;

She climbs up the mountains,

High, high, high; '

My poor little sister,

She has but one eye!"

Rough Common Sense doth here confess

Her kinship to Imagination;

Betraying also, I should guess,

Some little pride in the relation.

Original

For even while vexed, and puzzled too,

By the vagaries of the latter,—

Fearful what next the child may do,—

She looks with loving wonder at her.

Plain Sense keeps ever to the road

That's beaten down and daily trod;

While Fancy fords the rivers wide,

And scrambles up the mountain-side:

By which exploits she's always getting

Either a tumble or a wetting.

While simple Sense looks straight before,

Fancy "peeps" further, and sees more;

And yet, if left to walk alone,

May chance, like most long-sighted people,

To trip her foot against a stone

While gazing at a distant steeple.

Nay, worse! with all her grace erratic,

And feats aerial and aquatic,

Her flights sublime, and moods ecstatic,

She of the vision wild and high

Hath but a solitary eye!

And,—not to quote the Scripture, which

Forebodes the falling in the ditch,—

Doubtless by following such a guide

Blindly, in all her wanderings wide,

The world, at best, would get o' one side.

What then? To rid us of our doubt

Is there no other thing to do

But we must turn poor Fancy out,

And only downright Fact pursue?

Ah, see you not, bewildered man!

The heavenly beauty of the plan?

'T was so ordained, in counsels high,

To give to sweet Imagination

A single deep and glorious eye;

But then't was meant, in compensation,

That Common Sense, with optics keen,—

As maid of honor to a queen,—

On her blind side should always stay,

And keep her in the middle way.