stories and poems of animals and birds and flowers and of the seasons
of the year as you will find in the following pages, your magic glass
of reading will open up the fairyland of Nature.

For magic wonders are not limited to the fairylands that we read about
in the Arabian Nights or in the tales of Cinderella or of the Sleeping
Beauty. There is the enchantment which put the princess and all her
household to sleep for a hundred years until the prince came to
release them. There is also the enchantment of the frost, that stills
all the life of brook and lake and river, and holds the outdoor world
in deep sleep until the breath of spring comes and releases the
prisoners. There is the enchantment which Aladdin controlled by his
lamp and his ring, so that at his bidding giant figures appeared to do
his will; there is also the enchantment of the snow, of the fire,
of the lightning, of the storm; or there is the equally marvelous
enchantment by which the rose unfolds from the bud, the apple grows
from the blossom, and the robin from the tiny blue egg. Only we must
see and listen when the magicians lead us to the fairy world of
Nature. Aladdin had passed the entrance to the magic cave a hundred
times and had seen nothing. So men pass the fields and see nothing but
the corn and the wheat and the cotton, and in the autumn they see the
harvesters gathering the crops of the fields. But the poet looks on
these same fields and gathers another crop from them, and this he puts
into a song, and this song opens for us the world of Nature.




ANIMALS