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WILLOW WARE, by                    
First Line: On grandmamma's table is waiting for me
Last Line: "that beautiful, queer, little land of blue"
Subject(s): Grandparents;legends;willow Trees; Grandmothers;grandfathers;great Grandfathers;great Grandmothers


ON Grandmamma's table is waiting for me
A plate with gingerbread piled,
Bread and milk and berries and cream,
And the mug marked "For a Good Child."
And I eat my supper and wonder where
That wonderful land may be,
Where the sky is white and the earth is blue
That on my plate I see.

Grandma, you know most everything —
Tell me a story about it all:
Do the long-tailed birds know how to sing?
Did a Princess live in that castle small?
The Princess's hair in a fairy tale
Is generally gold, but this is blue;
How does the boat go without any sail?
Tell me the story — Grandma, do.

So she tells me the legend — centuries old,
Of the mandarin, rich in lands and gold,
Of Sichi fair and Chang the good,
Who loved each other as lovers should;
How they hid in the gardener's hut awhile,
Then fled away to the Beautiful Isle,
Though the cruel father pursued them there,
And would have killed the helpless pair;
But a kindly Power, by pity stirred,
Changed each into a beautiful bird.

Then Grandmamma puts her spectacles on
And shows me on the plate
The mandarin's house, the island home,
The boat, the bridge, the gate;
Here is the orange tree where they talked —
Here they are running away —
And over all at the top you see
The birds making love alway.
And the odd little figures seem to live,
Strange fancies fill my head,
Till Grandmamma tells me much too soon
It's time to go to bed.

But I dream of a land all blue and white —
I see the lovers take their flight;
Over the arching bridge they go,
One of the lover-birds flies below.
From the little house with the turned-up edges
Come tiny lords and ladies and pages,
And the bedpost turns to a willow tree,
And I myself seem at last to be
An azure lassie wandering through
That beautiful, queer, little land of blue.





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