TO MY NAME-CHILD

TO MY NAME-CHILD

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn

    with proper speed, 

Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read. 

Then shall you discover, that you name was

    printed down

By the English printers, long before, in London

    town. 

In the great and busy city where the East and 

    West are met, 

All the little letters did the English printer set;

While you thought of nothing, and were still too

    young to play, 

Foreign people thought of you in places far away. 

Ai, and while you slept, a baby, over all the 

    English lands

Other little children took the volume in their 

    hands;

Other children questioned, in their homes across 

    the seas:

Who was Little Louis, won’t you tell us, mother, 

    please?

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down 

    and go and play, 

Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey, 

Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried

    by the breeze, 

Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas. 

And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog 

    rolls to you,

Long ere you could read it, how I told you what 

    to do;

And that while you thought of no one, nearly half

    the world away

Some one though of Louis on the beach of 

    Monterey!