Children, you are very little,

For the dews are falling fastAnd the night has come at last.Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest,Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother’s breast.Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you;she’ll be your guardian and shield.Lullaby, slumber, my darling, till morning bebright upon mountain and field.Long, long the shadows fall.All…

Now in a drawer the direful cane,That sceptre of the . . . reign,And the long hawser, that on the backOf Marsyas fell with many a whack,Twice hardened out of Scythian hides,Now sleep till the October ides.In summer if the boys be well.

And when he puts his tools away,He locks the door and takes the key.Away behind the currant rowWhere no one else but cook may go,Far in the plots, I see him digOld 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…

Window robins, winter rooks,And the picture story-books.Water now is turned to stoneNurse and I can walk upon;Still we find the flowing brooksIn the picture story-books.All the pretty things put by,Wait upon the children’s eye,Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,In the picture story-books.We may see how all things areSeas and cities, near and far,And the flying…

And high overhead and all moving about,There were thousands of millions of stars.There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,Nor of people in church or the Park,As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,And that glittered and winked in the dark.The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,And…

Under the May’s whole Heaven of blue;Or whether on the sofa you,No grown up person being by,Do some soft corner occupy;Take you this volume in your handsAnd enter into other lands,For lo! (as children feign) supposeYou, hunting in the garden rows,Or in the lumbered attic, orThe cellar – a nail-studded doorAnd dark, descending stairway foundThat…