A Child's Garden of Verses

By Robert Louis Stevenson

First published in 1885 under the title Penny Whistles, "A Child's Garden of Verses" is a collection of poetry for children by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, a collection that concerns childhood, illness, play, and solitude. Stevenson dedicated the poems to his nurse Alison Cunningham, who cared for him during his many childhood illnesses. The collection includes some of Stevenson’s most famous poems, including “The Land of Counterpane”, “My Shadow" and “The Lamplighter”.

Many of the poems describe the imaginative life of the child. In “Pirate Story”, for example, the garden becomes the setting for pirate adventure. “The Land of Nod” describes the dream land that children can only visit when they are asleep.

Some of the poems, particularly those in “The Child Alone” section evoke the loneliness of being young, ill and without companions (certainly Stevenson was here remembering his own childhood). Children in these poems (for example “The Unseen Playmate”. “My Ship and I”, and “My Kingdom”) use their imaginations to entertain themselves, rather than the company of a friend.

Poems in the “Garden Days” section of the collection are concerned with nature and the seasons. Other poems in the book are moral reminders to children. For example, “Good and Bad Children” warns that children who behave badly will be disliked as adults.

The “Envoys” section of poetry consists of poems dedicated to Stevenson’s friends and family, particularly those who he spent time with at Colinton Manse when he was a child. His experiences at the manse playing in the garden inspired many of the poems in the collection.

In the last poem of the collection, “To Any Reader”, Stevenson reminds his readers that all children eventually grow up, and that these poems are memories of a time that has past. This poem also serves to show that A Child’s Garden of Verses is not just a book for children, but addresses adult themes like loss and loneliness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E-BOOKARAMA
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9791220220989

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850, changing his second name to ‘Louis’ at the age of eighteen. He has always been loved and admired by countless readers and critics for ‘the excitement, the fierce joy, the delight in strangeness, the pleasure in deep and dark adventures’ found in his classic stories and, without doubt, he created some of the most horribly unforgettable characters in literature and, above all, Mr. Edward Hyde.

Book preview

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES

Robert Louis Stevenson

To Alison Cunningham

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!

---

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