Then off into the trees they fly
And curl themselves up tight
Inside a leaf that’s soft and warm,
And there they sleep all night.
[POPPIES]
Up the lane behind our house
A little hill you climb,
And at the top on either side
There is in Summer time—
A cornfield waving in the wind,
Where poppies shake their head
And peep at you between the corn,
A glowing dancing red—
I’ll tell you what I did one day
When nurse was cross with me,
And pulled my hair back in a plait,
As tight as tight could be—
I crept up to the swaying corn
And in the poppies there
I sat down by myself, and then
I undid all my hair!
I picked some gleaming poppies red,
The biggest I could find,
I wound them tightly in my curls,
And some hung down behind.
I walked about so very grand
Till it began to rain,
When one by one the poppies fell,
And I went home again.
[A QUEER BUTTERFLY]
I caught a lovely butterfly,
In Marianna’s net.
It was the sweetest blue and gold,
The prettiest I’d seen yet.
But Marianna came and said
The butterfly should be
Not mine, but hers, because the net
Belonged to her, not me.
We quarrelled hard, and didn’t stop,
Until my frock was torn,
And then she pointed down to where
The net lay, on the lawn.
The butterfly was creeping out
And spread its wings of blue,
And then stood up, just fancy that!
You’d hardly think it true!
We saw then what it really was,
A fairy, come to play,
And all because we quarrelled so,
She fluttered right away.