WHETHER upon the garden seat <br />You lounge with your uplifted feet <br />Under the May's whole Heaven of blue; <br />Or whether on the sofa you, <br />No grown up person being by, <br />Do some soft corner occupy; <br />Take you this volume in your hands <br />And enter into other lands, <br />For lo! (as children feign) suppose <br />You, hunting in the garden rows, <br />Or in the lumbered attic, or <br />The cellar - a nail-studded door <br />And dark, descending stairway found <br />That led to kingdoms underground: <br />There standing, you should hear with ease <br />Strange birds a-singing, or the trees <br />Swing in big robber woods, or bells <br />On many fairy citadels: <br /> <br />There passing through (a step or so - <br />Neither mamma nor nurse need know!) <br />From your nice nurseries you would pass, <br />Like Alice through the Looking-Glass <br />Or Gerda following Little Ray, <br />To wondrous countries far away. <br />Well, and just so this volume can <br />Transport each little maid or man <br />Presto from where they live away <br />Where other children used to play. <br />As from the house your mother sees <br />You playing round the garden trees, <br />So you may see if you but look <br />Through the windows of this book <br />Another child far, far away <br />And in another garden play. <br />But do not think you can at all, <br />By knocking on the window, call <br />That child to hear you. He intent <br />Is still on his play-business bent. <br />He does not hear, he will not look, <br />Nor yet be lured out of this book. <br />For long ago, the truth to say, <br />He has grown up and gone away; <br />And it is but a child of air <br />That lingers in the garden there.<br /><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/envoy-for-a-child-s-garden-of-verses/
