[Illustration]




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.




ENVOYS

[Illustration]




TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA


        If two may read aright
        These rhymes of old delight
        And house and garden play,
    You too, 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
    We 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.

[Illustration]




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.

[Illustration]




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?_

[Illustration]

[Illustration: TO AUNTIE]

[Illustration]




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.
    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, twisting shells!
    The level of the parlour 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 parlour 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!

[Illustration]




TO MY NAME-CHILD


                                 1

    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?


                                 2

    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 sandpipers, 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!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




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.




THE SCRIBNER ILLUSTRATED CLASSICS

  THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
    Edited by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
    _Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish_

  THE STORY OF ROLAND
    by JAMES BALDWIN
    _Illustrated by Peter Hurd_

  THE STORY OF SIEGFRIED
    by JAMES BALDWIN
    _Illustrated by Peter Hurd_

  DRUMS
    by JAMES BOYD
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  A LITTLE PRINCESS
    by FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
    _Illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts_

  THE DEERSLAYER
    by JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
    by JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  ROBIN HOOD
    by PAUL CRESWICK
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE ENCHANTED BOOK
    Edited by ALICE DALGLIESH
    _Illustrated by Concetta Cacciola_

  ROBINSON CRUSOE
    by DANIEL DEFOE
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE CHILDREN OF DICKENS
    by CHARLES DICKENS
    Edited by Samuel McChord Crothers
    _Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith_

  HANS BRINKER
    by MARY MAPES DODGE
    _Illustrated by George W. Edwards_

  POEMS OF CHILDHOOD
    by EUGENE FIELD
    _Illustrated by Maxfield Parrish_

  THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME
    by JOHN FOX, JR.
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES
    _Illustrated by Elenore Abbott_

  LONE COWBOY
    by WILL JAMES
    _Illustrated by the author_

  SMOKY
    by WILL JAMES
    _Illustrated by the author_

  WESTWARD HO!
    by CHARLES KINGSLEY
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE BOY'S KING ARTHUR
    by SIDNEY LANIER
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS
    by JANE PORTER
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE YEARLING
    by MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  QUENTIN DURWARD
    by SIR WALTER SCOTT
    _Illustrated by C. B. Chambers_

  THE CHILDREN'S BIBLE
    by HENRY SHERMAN AND CHARLES KENT
    _Illustrated by various artists_

  HEIDI
    by JOHANNA SPYRI
    _Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith_

  A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
    by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
    _Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith_

  THE BLACK ARROW
    by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  DAVID BALFOUR
    by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  KIDNAPPED
    by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  TREASURE ISLAND
    by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
    by JULES VERNE
    _Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth_

  TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
    by JULES VERNE
    _Illustrated by W. J. Aylward_


  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.