One of the best-loved travel rhymes in the Mother Goose collection, asking how far it is to a fabled city and promising you can get there and back by candlelight if your heels are nimble. Its question-and-answer shape works well read as two voices.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
How many miles is it to Babylon?—
Threescore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?—
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light.
About this rhyme
A question-and-answer rhyme built for two voices: how far to Babylon, can you get there by candlelight, yes and back again. Babylon here isn't really Babylon, just a stand-in for somewhere impossibly far off.
Take the question and the answer between you and a child, back and forth, rather than reading it straight through.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition