The little brown sandman lives, you know,
On the top of the hill where the poppies grow;
The roof of his house is a great toadstool
With a wee bell-tower, like the village school;
And tumbling and heaping about the door
Are piles of sand from the white seashore.
The little brown sandman, bent and thin,
Has a deep blue cloak that he wraps up in;
His peaked hat has a star on top
And he fastens his cloak with a green gumdrop;
He’s always sleepy; a slow man he;
And he stretches and yawns at half-past three.
Now the greatest joy in the sandman’s life
Is Polly M’ Pumpkin, the sandman’s wife;
She’s a round little soul, with a rosy face,
And she bustles and bounces about the place;
The children the sandman goes to see
She loves a great deal more than he.
At seven o’clock, on every night,
She lights his lamp with a fagot bright;
Then Polly M’ Pumpkin wakes him up
As he sits asleep, by his blue tea-cup;
“The children are nodding now,” she cries,
“Go sprinkle the sea-sand upon their eyes!”
And she hands him a sack, when he blinks and starts,
“For My Sleepiest Children” (ah, bless their hearts!)
And quite unknown to the brown sandman
She has mixed it up, as she only can,
With magical sugar, as sweet as a rose,
That brings good dreams wherever it goes.
“Now hurry away!” she cries, and stands,
On the flat door-stone, and waves her hands;
The little brown sandman slips away
Till he’s lost in the stars of the milky way;
“He’d never get started in all his life,
If it wasn’t for me,” says the sandman’s wife.
Then she climbs the bell-tower, up on the house,
And she peers about, like a bright-eyed mouse;
And she says to herself, as she always does,
“I’ll let him sleep some night, because
I’m going to go, in my husband’s place,”
And a mischievous smile lights up her face.