A child's garden of verses

Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
  Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the garden,
  Down by the banks of the river, we go.
  
Here is the mill with the humming of thunder,
  Here is the weir with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running under --
  Marvellous places, though handy to home!
  
Sounds of the village grow stiller and stiller,
  Stiller the note of the birds on the hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
  Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
  
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
  Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
  Long after all of the boys are away.
  
Home from the Indies and home from the ocean,
  Heroes and soldiers we all shall come home;
Still we shall [find]1 the old mill wheel in motion,
  Turning and churning [that]2 river to foam.
  
You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
  I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
  Here we shall meet and remember the past.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow --
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head. 
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom were coming out,
Some yellow and some red. 

I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small. 
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all. 

And all about was mine, I said,
The little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too. 
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew. 

I played there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me. 
At last I heard my mother call
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea. 

And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms. 
Alas! and as my home I neared,
How very big my nurse appeared,
How great and cool the rooms!