Explore "The Water-Babies" by Charles Kingsley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Come to me, O ye children! / For I hear you at your play; / And the questions that perplexed me / Have vanished quite away. / "Ye open the Eastern windows, / That look towards the sun, / Where thoughts are singing swallows, / And the brooks of morning run. / / "For what are all our contrivings / And the wisdom of our books, / When compared with your caresses, / And the gladness of your looks? / "Ye are better than all the ballads / That ever were sung or said; / For ye are living poems, / And all the rest are dead." / - Longfellow
Here begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied account of the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom saw on his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; which all good little children are requested to read; that, if ever they get to the Other-end-of-Nowhere, as they may very probably do, they may not burst out laughing, or try to run away, or do any other silly vulgar thing which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.