A Child's Garden of Verses. Robert Louis Stevenson

ert Louis

      A Child's Garden of Verses

      TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

      FROM HER BOY

      For the long nights you lay awake

      And watched for my unworthy sake:

      For your most comfortable hand

      That led me through the uneven land:

      For all the story-books you read:

      For all the pains you comforted:

      For all you pitied, all you bore,

      In sad and happy days of yore: —

      My second Mother, my first Wife,

      The angel of my infant life —

      From the sick child, now well and old,

      Take, nurse, the little book you hold!

      And grant it, Heaven, that all who read

      May find as dear a nurse at need,

      And every child who lists my rhyme,

      In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,

      May hear it in as kind a voice

      As made my childish days rejoice!

R. L. S.

      I

      BED IN SUMMER

      IN winter I get up at night

      And dress by yellow candle-light.

      In summer, quite the other way,

      I have to go to bed by day.

      I have to go to bed and see

      The birds still hopping on the tree,

      Or hear the grown-up people's feet

      Still going past me in the street.

      And does it not seem hard to you,

      When all the sky is clear and blue,

      And I should like so much to play,

      To have to go to bed by day?

      II

      A THOUGHT

      IT is very nice to think

      The world is full of meat and drink,

      With little children saying grace

      In every Christian kind of place.

      III

      AT THE SEASIDE

      WHEN I was down beside the sea

      A wooden spade they gave to me

      To dig the sandy shore.

      My holes were empty like a cup,

      In every hole the sea came up,

      Till it could come no more.

      IV

      YOUNG NIGHT THOUGHT

      ALL night long and every night,

      When my mamma puts out the light,

      I see the people marching by,

      As plain as day, before my eye.

      Armies and emperors and kings,

      All carrying different kinds of things,

      And marching in so grand a way,

      You never saw the like by day.

      So fine a show was never seen,

      At the great circus on the green;

      For every kind of beast and man

      Is marching in that caravan.

      At first they move a little slow,

      But still the faster on they go,

      And still beside them close I keep

      Until we reach the town of Sleep.

      V

      WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN

      A CHILD should always say what's true

      And speak when he is spoken to,

      And behave mannerly at table;

      At least as far as he is able.

      VI

      RAIN

      THE rain is raining all around,

      It falls on field and tree,

      It rains on the umbrellas here,

      And on the ships at sea.

      VII

      PIRATE STORY

      THREE of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,

      Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea.

      Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,

      And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.

      Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,

      Wary of the weather and steering by a star?

      Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,

      To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?

      Hi! but here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea —

      Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!

      Quick, and we'll escape them, they're as mad as they can be,

      The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.

      VIII

      FOREIGN LANDS

      UP into the cherry tree

      Who should climb but little me?

      I held the trunk with both my hands

      And looked abroad on foreign lands.

      I saw the next door garden lie,

      Adorned with flowers, before my eye,

      And many pleasant places more

      That I had never seen before.

      I saw the dimpling river pass

      And be the sky's blue looking-glass;

      The dusty roads go up and down

      With people tramping in to town.

      If I could find a higher tree

      Farther and farther I should see,

      To where the grown-up river slips

      Into the sea among the ships,

      To where the roads on either hand

      Lead onward into fairy land,

      Where all the children dine at five,

      And all the playthings come alive.

      IX

      WINDY NIGHTS

      WHENEVER the moon and stars are set,

      Whenever the wind is high,

      All night long in the dark and wet,

      A man goes riding by.

      Late in the night when the fires are out,

      Why does he gallop and gallop about?

      Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

      And ships are