One of those that this day kept--not coming and going, but coming and coming, just as Grannie said his foolish rime haunted the old captain, was that which two days before came into his head when first he caught sight of the moon playing bo-peep with him betwixt the cows legs: Whan the coo loups ower the mune, The reid gowd rains intil men's shune.
I think there must at one time have been a poet in the Glenwarlock nursery, for there were rimes, and modifications of rimes, floating about the family, for which nobody could account.

Cosmo's mother too had been, in a fragmentary way, fond of verse; and although he could not remember many of her favourite rimes, his father did, and delighted in saying them over and over to her child--and that long before he was capable of understanding them.

Here is one: Make not of thy heart a casket, Opening seldom, quick to close; But of bread a wide-mouthed basket, And a cup that overflows.
Here is another: The gadfly makes the horse run swift: "Speed," quoth the gadfly, "is my gift." One more, and it shall be the last for the present: They serve as dim lights on the all but vanished mother, of whom the boy himself knew so little.
In God alone, the perfect end, Wilt thou find thyself or friend.
Cosmo's dream of life was, to live all his days in the house of his forefathers--or at least and worst, to return to it at last, how long soever he might have been compelled to be away from it.

In his castle-building, next to that of the fairy-mother-lady, his fondest fancy was--not the making of a fortune, but the returning home with one, to make the house of his fathers beautiful, and the heart of his father glad.

About the land he did not think so much yet: the country was open to him as if it had been all his own.
Still, he had quite a different feeling for that portion which yet lay within the sorely contracted marches; to have seen any smallest nook of that sold, would have been like to break his heart.