The Green Singing Book – Illustration by Elizabeth Shippen Green

The Green Singing Book – Girl Singing – Illustration by Elizabeth Shippen Green
from The book of the little past, 1910 by Josephine Preston Peabody

The Green Singing Book
by Josephine Preston Peabody from The book of the little past, 1910

I don’t know how to read the words,
Nor how the black things go.
But if you stand it up, and sing,
You never have to know.

The music sounds alike each time
When grown-up people play;
But every time I sing, myself,
It sounds a different way.

And when I’ve sung the book all through,
And every page, around,
I stand it upside down and sing,
To see how that will sound.

I sing how all the things outside
The window look to me;
The shiny wrinkles in the road,
And then, about my Tree;

I sing about the City, too,
The noises and the wheels;
And Windows Winking in the sun;
I sing the way it feels.

And if a Sparrow flies across,
I put him in the Song.
I sing whatever happens in,
To make it last for long.

I sing about the things I think
Of almost everything.
Sometimes I don’t know what to Think
– Till I begin to Sing.