A Child's Garden of Verses

To Alison Cunningham

From Her Boy

For the long nights you lay awake

And watched for my unworthy sake:

For your most comfortable hand

That led me through the uneven land:

For all the story- you read:

For all the pains you comforted:

For all you pitied, all you bore,

In sad and happy days of yore:--

My second Mother, my first Wife,

The angel of my infant life--

From the sick child, now well and old,

Take, nurse, the little you hold!

And grant it, Heaven, that all who read

May find as dear a nurse at need,

And every child who lists my rhyme,

In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,

May hear it in as kind a voice

As made my childish days rejoice!