Page:The strange story book.djvu/19

 Rh peasant's fairy-tales were so entertaining that it was hours before the party came back.

Well, there does not seem much more to add except to place at the end of these pages a poem which should have gone into the very first Fairy Book, but by some accident was left out. It is only those who know how to shake oil the fetters of the outside world, and to sever themselves from its noise and scramble, that can catch the sound of a fairy horn or the rush of fairy feet. The little girl in the poem had many friends in fairyland as well as pets among the wood folk, and she has grown up among the books year by year, .sometimes writing stories herself of the birds and beasts she has tamed, and being throughout her life the dearest friend of the man who planned the Christmas books twenty-five years ago.

TO ELSPETH ANGELA CAMPBELL

Too late they come, too late for you, These old friends that are ever new, Enchanted in our volume blue.

For you ere now have wandered o'er A world of tales untold of yore, And learned the later fairy lore !

Nay, as within her briery brake, The Sleeping Beauty did awake, Old tales may rouse them for your sake.

And you once more may voyage through The forests that of old we knew, The fairy forests deep in dew,

Where you, resuming childish things, Shall listen when the Blue Bird sings, And sit at feasts with fairy kings,