Fair, or less Fair, dear Child, as haply you may be,
Fashioned or straight or crooked, of low or high degree,
So be thou kind and good, this book is meant for _thee_.
For, of all blooms, the best and sweetest flowers for me
Are those whose beauty’s but the shrine of fragrant purity.
And, in the perfumed garden of GOD’S world, we see
That children, too, like flowers, may pour their incense free,
Swinging the smoking censers of their prayers that we
May homeward rise to heaven’s hive like swift gold-powdered bee.