Whoever hears Charles Swain’s ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’ sung now? We never do, and even if I give a quotation from it, folks don’t know it. Yet Swain was a poet—a minor poet, maybe—who sang for his day and generation. My Dad used to warble it for us on the hearthstone or at socials, at the Feast and at Christmas.

“Oh, had I but Aladdin’s lamp,
Though only for a day,
I'd try to find a link to bind
The joys that pass away.
I’d try to bring an angel’s wing
Upon the earth again,
And build true worth a throne on earth—
A throne beloved by men.
It should be May and always May,
I’d wreathe the world with flower,
I'd robe the barren wilderness
And bring life happy hours.”