TO MINNIE The river, on from mill to mill, And I can hear them call and say: "How far is it to Babylon?" Ah, far enough, my dear, 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 Fre we be young again. To you in distant India, these I send across the seas, 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! Was honest, homely, Scottish shore; Reach down a hand, my dear, and take 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? 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 S 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. |