Forgiven
I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...
And Nanny let my beetle out -
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -
She went and let my beetle out -
And Beetle ran away.
She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.
She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.
We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"
It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."
And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.
~ A A Milne, Now We Are Six
This poem reminds me so much of my Rebecca, who is exceedingly fond of ladybugs, and is constantly "taming" them. She carries them around in her hand, and speaks to them just as though they can understand every word. The other day she had one on the school table and it flew away. She found it a couple of days later upstairs in our bedroom. She was sure it was the same one, because it came right to her when she called it. It went missing again, and a few days later, Gabriel came running, all excited because he had found Becca's 'Nelle (short for "coccinelle"), sleeping in a window upstairs.
* edited to add photo and missing words!
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