I
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey:
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.
II
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.
Kingsley wrote this as a piece of plainspoken advice, the kind of thing meant for a child's ear rather than a critic's. He opens by admitting he has no grand gift to offer, no birdsong bright enough for a grey sky, which is itself a lovely bit of self-deniel — the poem's music comes from its own confession of dullness. Then the second stanza turns and hands over the one thing he does have: a rule to live by. Be good. Do noble things rather than merely dream of doing them. The famous closing image, life and death and eternity gathered into "one grand, sweet song," lifts the whole poem out of the schoolroom and into something almost hymn-like. It still lands because the advice is so unadorned — no clever tricks, just the old insistence that character is built through action, not intention, offered gently, like a parent's last word at the door.
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