A Treasure: A Child's Garden of Verses

After writing about this book in an earlier post here I dug through the shelves at my mom's house in April and found the original copy. She let me take it home. I love the tattered cover, the illustrations, and the themes in the rhymes. This poem ends the book:

To Any Reader

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far,far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden air.

- Robert Louis Stevenson