Come Hither

A 1001 CBYMRBYGU. Now this was a challenge. Some are English, yet not in English. Here's a sample:

“Hay, nou the day dauis;
The jolie Cok crauis;
Nou shroudis the shauis,
Throu Natur anone....”
Some relate stories that are outside my experiences:

“When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry, ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.”

Some are in dialect:

“There were twa brethren in the north,
They went to the school thegither;
The one unto the other said,
‘Will you try a warsle afore?'

Some are familiar with additional verses, including BINGO. Did you know there was a verse about a miller who gets a cask of ale and calls it STINGO?

And then, of course, as I expected, many, many very familiar poems, like Blake's The Tyger and Tennyson's The Eagle and Coleridge's “Kubla Khan.” A whole section on war and lots of poems about death and killing and pain and lovers; all very surprising to find in a “children's book.” (A question: Is this a children's book? What makes it so?)