ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
1 95 
THE GINGERBREAD TREE. 
O H, do you know, and do you know, 
The tree where risen doughnuts grow, 
And in a shower come tumbling down, 
All sugary and crisp and brown ? 
And did you ever chance to see 
The plum-cakes on this charming tree? 
And reaching o’er the fence, perhaps 
A stem just strung with ginger-snaps? 
The house stands close beside the street; 
Around its roof the branches meet. 
If you look up, about your head 
Fall down great squares of gingerbread. 
Once when I went inside the door, 
Through the wide window to the floor, 
A bough came bending all apart, 
And tossed me in a jelly tart. 
Whoever lives there, I must say. 
Though he is lame, and old, and gray, 
What a rare gardener he must be, 
And, oh, how happy with that tree! 
My mother says that very few 
Gingerbread-trees she ever knew, 
And none shook down, it seems to her, 
Like this, an apple turnover. 
Some days it drops upon the ground, 
Soft, soft, a frosted heart, and round, 
And sometimes, when the branches stir, 
Such cookies rain as never were. 
And you can guess — oh, you can guess 
That if’t is too far a recess, 
Yet all the children, as a rule, 
Go slow there, coming home from school. 
Harper's Young People, 1889. Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
Ivy clings to wood or stone. 
And hides the ruin that it feeds upon. 
Cowper. 
