Hidden treasure …

This post was originally published on October 26, 2009.

Often, if we rummage through old books and folders, or a shoe box that belonged to our parents, we find something we haven’t seen or read in decades. What treasure when we lift open the lid to peer inside.

I found a battered book I received as a gift in 1970, which I read to my children every night. That was forty-one years ago. I knew it was in a box waiting to be discovered yet again. Then quite by chance two nights ago I found a sheet I had typed in 1976 with part of a poem I loved dearly from this book. Here it is in part …

Day Is Done

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like a benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Do you have a favorite memory of a book you read to your kids, or a book someone read to you?

fOIS In The City