For the long nights you lay awake <br />And watched for my unworthy sake: <br />For your most comfortable hand <br />That led me through the uneven land: <br />For all the story-books you read: <br />For all the pains you comforted: <br /> <br />For all you pitied, all you bore, <br />In sad and happy days of yore:- <br />My second Mother, my first Wife, <br />The angel of my infant life- <br />From the sick child, now well and old, <br />Take, nurse, the little book you hold! <br /> <br />And grant it, Heaven, that all who read <br />May find as dear a nurse at need, <br />And every child who lists my rhyme, <br />In the bright, fireside, nursery clime, <br />May hear it in as kind a voice <br />As made my childish days rejoice!<br /><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-alison-cunningham-from-her-boy/
