A Child's Garden of Verses

By Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith

Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
Copyright 1905 by Charles Scribner's Sons
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied without permission from Charles Scribner's Sons.

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To Alison Cunningham, From Her Boy

Stevenson wrote this poem to thank his childhood nurse, Alison Cunningham, for taking care of him when he was young and often sick.

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 long ago:—
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 hears my rhyme,
In the bright, fireside, nursery time,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childhood days rejoice!

— R. L. S.

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Contents

• To Alison Cunningham — vii
• Bed in Summer — 3
• A Thought — 4
• At the Sea-Side — 5
• Young Night-Thought — 6
• Whole Duty of Children — 7
• Rain — 7
• Pirate Story — 8
• Foreign Lands — 9
• Windy Nights — 10
• Travel — 11
• Singing — 13
• Looking Forward — 14
• A Good Play — 15
• Where Go the Boats? — 16
• Auntie's Skirts — 17
• The Land of Counterpane — 18
• The Land of Nod — 19
• My Shadow — 20
• System — 22
• A Good Boy — 23
• Escape at Bedtime — 24
• Marching Song — 25
• The Cow — 26
• Happy Thought — 27
• The Wind — 28
• Keepsake Mill — 29
• Good and Bad Children — 31
• Foreign Children — 33
• The Sun Travels — 35
• The Lamplighter — 36
• My Bed Is a Boat — 37
• The Moon — 39
• The Swing — 40
• Time to Rise — 41
• Looking-Glass River — 42
• Fairy Bread — 44
• From a Railway Carriage — 45
• Winter-Time — 46
• The Hayloft — 47
• Farewell to the Farm — 49
• North-West Passage — 50
• Good-Night — 50
• Shadow March — 51
• In Port — 52

The Child Alone

• The Unseen Playmate — 57
• My Ship and I — 59
• My Kingdom — 61
• Picture-Books in Winter — 63
• My Treasures — 65
• Block City — 67
• The Land of Story-Books — 69
• Armies in the Fire — 71
• The Little Land — 73

Garden Days

• Night and Day — 79
• Nest Eggs — 82
• The Flowers — 84
• Summer Sun — 86
• The Dumb Soldier — 87
• Autumn Fires — 89
• The Gardener — 90
• Historical Associations — 92

Closing Poems

• To Willie and Henrietta — 97
• To My Mother — 98
• To Auntie — 99
• To Minnie — 100
• To My Name-Child — 103
• To Any Reader — 105

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Illustrations

This book includes full-color drawings by Jessie Willcox Smith placed beside these poems:

• Bed in Summer (page 4) — "In winter I get up at night / And dress by yellow candle-light."
• Foreign Lands (page 10) — "I held the trunk with both my hands / And looked abroad on foreign lands."
• The Land of Counterpane (page 18) — "I was the giant great and still / That sits upon the pillow-hill,"
• My Shadow (page 20) — "He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; / I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!"
• Foreign Children (page 34) — "Little Indian, Sioux or Crow, / Little frosty Eskimo, / Little Turk or Japanee, / Oh! don't you wish that you were me?"
• Looking-Glass River (page 42) — "We can see our coloured faces / Floating on the shaken pool"
• The Hayloft (page 48) — "Oh, what a joy to clamber there, / Oh, what a place for play, / With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air, / The happy hills of hay!"
• North-West Passage (page 50) — "And face with an undaunted tread / The long black passage up to bed."
• Picture-Books in Winter (page 64) — "Water now is turned to stone / Nurse and I can walk upon; / Still we find the flowing brooks / In the picture story-books."
• The Little Land (page 74) — "I have just to shut my eyes / To go sailing through the skies— / To go sailing far away / To the pleasant Land of Play;"
• The Flowers (page 84) — "All the names I know from nurse: / Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, / Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, / And the Lady Hollyhock."
• To Auntie (page 100) — "What did the other children do? / And what were childhood, wanting you?"

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A Child's Garden of Verses

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?

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.

At the Sea-Side

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.

Young Night-Thought

All night long and every night,
When my mama 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