Envoy For "A Child's Garden Of Verses"

WHETHER upon the garden seat

You lounge with your uplifted feet

Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;

Or whether on the sofa you,

No grown up person being by,

Do some soft corner occupy;

Take you this volume in your hands

And enter into other lands,

For lo! (as children feign) suppose

You, hunting in the garden rows,

Or in the lumbered attic, or

The cellar - a nail-studded door

And dark, descending stairway found

That led to kingdoms underground:

There standing, you should hear with ease

Strange birds a-singing, or the trees

Swing in big robber woods, or bells

On many fairy citadels:

There passing through (a step or so -

Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)

From your nice nurseries you would pass,

Like Alice through the Looking-Glass

Or Gerda following Little Ray,

To wondrous countries far away.

Well, and just so this volume can

Transport each little maid or man

Presto from where they live away

Where other children used to play.

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see if you but look

Through the windows of this book

Another child far, far away

And in another garden play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is still on his play-business bent.

He does not hear, he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away;

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.