This anthology brings together the verse written for children over a period of five hundred years. It contains more than 300 poems written by 123 authors, and includes the rhymed precepts of medieval times, the admonitory verse of Elizabethan Puritans, the inspirational verse of Blake and Christopher Smart. This anthology also includes the nonsense verses of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, the nursery verses of Robert Louis Stevenson and A. A. Milne, and the poetical imaginings of Christina Rossetti, Eleanor Farjeon, and Walter de la Mare.