NEST EGGS

Birds all the sunny day
 Flutter and quarrel
 Here in the arbor-like
 Tent of the laurel.
Here in the fork
 The brown nest is seated;
 Four little blue eggs
 The mother keeps heated.
While we stand watching her,
 Staring like gabies,
 Safe in each egg are the
 Bird's little babies.
Soon the frail eggs they shall
 Chip, and upspringing
 Make all the April woods
 Merry with singing.
Younger than we are,
 O children, and frailer,
 Soon in blue air they'll be,
 Singer and sailor.
We, so much older,
 Taller and stronger,
 We shall look down on the
 Birdies no longer.
They shall go flying
 With musical speeches
 High overhead in the
 Tops of the beeches.
In spite of our wisdom
 And sensible talking,
 We on our feet must go
 Plodding and walking.

THE FLOWERS

All the names I know from nurse:
 Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
 Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
 And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
 Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
 Tiny trees for tiny dames—
 These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
 Shady fairies weave a house;
 Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
 Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people's trees,
 But the fairest woods are these;
 Where if I were not so tall,
 I should live for good and all.

AUTUMN FIRES

In the other gardens
 And all up the vale,
 From the autumn bonfires
 See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
 And all the summer flowers,
 The red fire blazes,
 The gray smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
 Something bright in all!
 Flowers in the summer,
 Fires in the fall!

ARMIES IN THE FIRE

The lamps now glitter down the street;
 Faintly sound the falling feet;
 And the blue even slowly falls
 About the garden trees and walls.
Now in the falling of the gloom
 The red fire paints the empty room;
 And warmly on the roof it looks,
 And flickers on the backs of books.
Armies march by tower and spire
 Of cities blazing, in the fire;—
 Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
 The armies fade, the lustre dies.
Then once again the glow returns;
 Again the phantom city burns;
 And down the red-hot valley, lo!
 The phantom armies marching go!
Blinking embers, tell me true
 Where are those armies marching to,
 And what the burning city is
 That crumbles in your furnaces!

SUMMER SUN

Great is the sun and wide he goes
 Through empty heaven without repose;
 And in the blue and glowing days
 More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
 To keep the shady parlor cool,
 Yet he will find a chink or two
 To slip his golden fingers through.
The dusty attic spider-clad
 He, through the key-hole, maketh glad;
 And through the broken edge of tiles,
 Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.
Meantime his golden face around
 He bares to all the garden ground,
 And sheds a warm and glittering look
 Among the ivy's inmost nook.
Above the hills, along the blue,
 Round the bright air with footing true,
 To please the child, to paint the rose,
 The garden of the World, he goes.

THE DUMB SOLDIER

When the grass was closely mown
 Walking on the lawn alone,
 In the turf a hole I found
 And hid a soldier underground.
Spring and daisies came apace;
 Grasses hide my hiding place;
 Grasses run like a green sea
 O'er the lawn up to my knee.
Under the grass alone he lies,
 Looking up with leaden eyes.
 Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
 To the stars and to the sun.
When the grass is ripe like grain,
 When the scythe is stoned again,
 When the lawn is shaven clear,
 Then my hole shall reappear.
I shall find him, never fear,
 I shall find my grenadier;
 But for all that's gone and come,
 I shall find my soldier dumb.
He has lived, a little thing,
 In the grassy woods of spring;
 Done, if he could tell me true,
 Just as I should like to do.
He has seen the starry hours
 And the springing of the flowers:
 And the fairy things that pass
 In the forests of the grass.
In the silence he has heard
 Talking bee and ladybird,
 And the butterfly has flown
 O'er him as he lay alone.
Not a word will he disclose,
 Not a word of all he knows.
 I must lay him on the shelf,
 And make up the tale myself.

THE GARDENER

The gardener does not love to talk,
 He makes and keeps the gravel walk;
 And when he puts his tools away,
 He locks the door and takes the key.
Away behind the currant row
 Where no one else but cook may go,
 Far in the plots, I see him dig,
 Old and serious, brown and big.
He digs the flowers, green, red, and blue,
 Nor wishes to be spoken to.
 He digs the flowers and cuts the hay,
 And never seems to want to play.
Silly gardener! summer goes,
 And winter comes with pinching toes,
 When in the garden bare and brown
 You must lay your barrow down.
Well now, and while the summer stays,
 To profit by these garden days
 O how much wiser you would be
 To play at Indian wars with me!

HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS

Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground,
 That now you smoke your pipe around,
 Has seen immortal actions done
 And valiant battles lost and won.
Here we had best on tip-toe tread,
 While I for safety march ahead,
 For this is that enchanted ground
 Where all who loiter slumber sound.
Here is the sea, here is the sand,
 Here is simple Shepherd's Land,
 Here are the fairy hollyhocks,
 And there are Ali Baba's rocks.
But yonder, see! apart and high,
 Frozen Siberia lies; where I,
 With Robert Bruce and William Tell,
 Was bound by an enchanter's spell.
 [TN]

Envoys

TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA

If two may read aright
 These rhymes of old delight
 And house and garden play,
 You two, my cousins, and you only, may.
You in a garden green
 With me were king and queen,
 Were hunter, soldier, tar,
 And all the thousand things that children are.
Now in the elders' seat
 We rest with quiet feet,
 And from the window-bay
 Watch the children, our successors, play.
"Time was," the golden head
 Irrevocably said;
 But time which none can bind,
 While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.

TO MY MOTHER

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
 For love of unforgotten times,
 And you may chance to hear once more
 The little feet along the floor.

TO AUNTIE

Chief of our aunts—not only I,
 But all your dozen of nurselings cry—
 What did the other children do?
 And what were childhood, wanting you?

TO MINNIE

The red room with the giant bed
 Where none but elders laid their head;
 The little room where you and I
 Did for awhile together lie
 And, simple suitor, I your hand
 In decent marriage did demand;
 The great day nursery, best of all,
 With pictures pasted on the wall
 And leaves upon the blind—
 A pleasant room wherein to wake
 And hear the leafy garden shake
 And rustle in the wind—
 And pleasant there to lie in bed
 And see the pictures overhead—
 The wars about Sebastopol,
 The grinning guns along the wall,
 The daring escalade,
 The plunging ships, the bleating sheep,
 The happy children ankle-deep
 And laughing as they wade:
 All these are vanished clean away,
 And the old manse is changed to-day;
 It wears an altered face
 And shields a stranger race.
But when we climbed upon a chair, Behold the gorgeous East was there! But when we climbed upon a chair,
Behold the gorgeous East was there!

The river, on from mill to mill,
 Flows past our childhood's garden still;
 But ah! we children never more
 Shall watch it from the water-door!
 Below the yew—it still is there—
 Our phantom voices haunt the air
 As we were still at play,
 And I can hear them call and say:
 "How far is it to Babylon?"
Ah, far enough, my dear,
 Far, far enough from here—
 Yet you have farther gone!
 "Can I get there by candlelight?"
 So goes the old refrain.
I do not know—perchance you might—-
 But only, children, hear it right,
 Ah, never to return again!
 The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
 Shall break on hill and plain,
 And put all stars and candles out
 Ere we be young again.
To you in distant India, these
 I send across the seas,
 Nor count it far across.
 For which of us forgets
 The Indian cabinets,
 The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,
 The pied and painted birds and beans,
 The junks and bangles, beads and screens,
 The gods and sacred bells,
 And the loud-humming, twisted shells!
 The level of the parlor floor
 Was honest, homely, Scottish shore;
 But when we climbed upon a chair,
 Behold the gorgeous East was there!
 Be this a fable; and behold
 Me in the parlor as of old,
 And Minnie just above me set
 In the quaint Indian cabinet!
 Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
 Too high for me to reach myself.
 Reach down a hand, my dear, and take
 These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake!

TO MY NAME-CHILD

I

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
 Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
 Then shall you discover, that your name was printed down
 By the English printers, long before, in London town.
In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
 All the little letters did the English printer set;
 While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
 Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and while you slept, a baby, over all the English lands,
 Other little children took the volume in their hands;
 Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
 Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?

II

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play.
 Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
 Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
 Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
 Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
 And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
 Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!

TO ANY READER

As from the house your mother sees
 You playing round the garden trees,
 So you may see, if you will 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 all 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.

Transcriber's Note

These last verses of HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS as found in some other editions of this book were not printed in this edition. They don't appear to be missing scans, as the page numbering remains sequential.

There, then, awhile in chains we lay,
 In wintry dungeons, far from day;
 But ris'n at length, with might and main,
 Our iron fetters burst in twain.
Then all the horns were blown in town;
 And to the ramparts clanging down,
 All the giants leaped to horse
 And charged behind us through the gorse.
On we rode, the others and I,
 Over the mountains blue, and by
 The Silver River, the sounding sea,
 And the robber woods of Tartary.
A thousand miles we galloped fast,
 And down the witches' lane we passed,
 And rode amain, with brandished sword,
 Up to the middle, through the ford.
Last we drew rein—a weary three—
 Upon the lawn, in time for tea,
 And from our steeds alighted down
 Before the gates of Babylon.