V

TO MY NAME-CHILD

SOME

I

OME 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 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 !

ΙΟΥ

VI

TO ANY READER

S from the house your mother sees

As

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.

Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London.