Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger: <br />Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray; <br />Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger <br />Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away. <br /> <br />Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story,-- <br />Let's find the _pictures_, and fancy all the rest:-- <br />We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory <br />Than Old Time, the story-teller, at his very best! <br /> <br />Turn to the brook, where the honeysuckle, tipping <br />O'er its vase of perfume spills it on the breeze, <br />And the bee and humming-bird in ecstacy are sipping <br />From the fairy flagons of the blooming locust trees. <br /> <br />Turn to the lane, where we used to 'teeter-totter,' <br />Printing little foot-palms in the mellow mold, <br />Laughing at the lazy cattle wading in the water <br />Where the ripples dimple round the buttercups of gold: <br /> <br />Where the dusky turtle lies basking on the gravel <br />Of the sunny sandbar in the middle-tide, <br />And the ghostly dragonfly pauses in his travel <br />To rest like a blossom where the water-lily died. <br /> <br />Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger: <br />Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray; <br />Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger <br />Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.<br /><br />James Whitcomb Riley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/babyhood-2/
