Talk on The Bookshelf
Talk on The Bookshelf
Poem
The little toy shepherdess looked up
Where the books stood in a row.
"I wish I could hear them talk," she said,
"For it must be fine, I know."
"Oh, yes," the brave tin soldier said;
"They are quiet enough all day;
But I've heard, when the children are all asleep,
They talk in a wondrous way."
And now it was night, and all was still;
Up on the bookcase shelves
The books began to stretch their backs
And talk among themselves.
"I wish," said the smallest book of all,
"You would not crowd me so;
I'm squeezed so tight I scarce can breathe;
It's because I'm small, I know."
"It's not my fault," a fat book said;
"I'm crowded so myself
I cannot stir; you little books
Should be kept off the shelf."
"My fairy tales," another said,
"Kept buzzing so inside
I scarcely slept a wink last night,
Although I tried and tried."
"Oh, go to sleep," said a lesson book.
"It's enough to work all day
Without your talking, too, at night;
So go to sleep, I say."
"Ah," the shepherdess sighed,
"Now they're going to sleep;
How happy their dreams must be!
I wish that I could be a book
And live on the shelf," said she.
Notes
Written by Katharine Pyle.
