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 TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA If two may read aright These rhymes of old delight And house and garden play, You two, 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 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. 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] 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. [Illustration: But when we climbed upon a chair, Behold the gorgeous East was there!] 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.