WHETHER upon the garden seat

You lounge with your uplifted feet

Under the May’s whole Heaven of blue;

Or whether on the sofa you,

No grown up person being by,

Do some soft corner occupy;

Take you this volume in your hands

And enter into other lands,

For lo! (as children feign) suppose

You, hunting in the garden rows,

Or in the lumbered attic, or

The cellar — a nail-studded door

And dark, descending stairway found

That led to kingdoms underground:

There standing, you should hear with ease

Strange birds a-singing, or the trees

Swing in big robber woods, or bells

On many fairy citadels:

There passing through (a step or so —

Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)

From your nice nurseries you would pass,

Like Alice through the Looking–............