I know an absent-minded boy,
To meditate is all his joy;
He seldom does the thing he ought
Because he is so rapt in thought.
At marbles he can never win;
He wears his waistcoat outside in;
He cannot add a sum up right;
And often he is not polite.
His mother cries, “My poor heart breaks,
Because the child makes such mistakes;
He never knows,” she says with sighs,
“Which side his bread the butter lies!”
One day, absorbed in meditation,
He roamed into a railway station,
And in a corner of a train
Sat down, with inattentive brain.
They rang the bell, the whistle blew,
They shook the flags, the engine flew;
But all the noise did not induce
This boy to quit his mood abstruse.
And when three hours were past and gone
He found himself at Somethington;
“What is this place?” he sighed in vain,
For railway men can not speak plain.
When he got home his parents had
To pay his fare, which was too bad;
More than two hundred miles, alas!
The Absent Boy had gone first-class.
For fear he should, in absentness,
Forget his own name and address
Whilst he pursues his meditations,
And so be lost to his relations,
Would it be best that he should wear
A collar like our Tray? or bear
His name and home in indigo
Pricked on his shoulder, or below?
The chief objection to this plan
Is, that his father is a man
Who often moves. If we begin
To prick the Boy’s home on his skin,
Before long he will be tattooed
With indigo from head to foot:
Perhaps a label on his chest
Would meet the difficulty best.