Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Longfellow Day/Natures Book

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

NATURE’S BOOK.

*****And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: “Here is a storybook
Thy Father has written for thee.”

“ Come, wander with me,” she said;
“Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.”

So he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long.
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song.
Or tell a more marvelous tale.
*****

—Longfellow—“ The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz. ”