XV AUNTIE'S SKIRTS HENEVER Auntie moves around, WH Her dresses make a curious sound; C 2 XVI THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE WHEN HEN I was sick and lay a-bed, And sometimes for an hour or so Among the bed-clothes, through the hills And sometimes sent my ships in fleets All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out, And planted cities all about. I was the giant great and still ; F XVII THE LAND OF NOD ROM breakfast on through all the day But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Try as I like to find the way, The curious music that I hear. XVIII I MY SHADOW HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me, see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to growNot at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. |