⁠Dear little Boy, upon these pages find
⁠The tangled fancies of thy father’s mind,
⁠Born of the hours when thou, a little child,
⁠Throned on his knee in breathless rapture smiled,
⁠Hearing entranced the marvels that were told
⁠Of fay and goblin in the days of old.
⁠Would that the glamour of those cloudless days
⁠Might cheer thee still, what time the toilsome maze
⁠Of riper years hath banished fairy lore—
⁠And blithesome youth hath fled to come no more!