A Child's Garden of Verses
1885
A Child's Garden of Verses
1885
Stevenson does something deceptively simple: he writes as a child, not about a child. The result is a collection that captures the peculiar magic of childhood perception, where a shadow is a companion, a swing is flight, and climbing a cherry tree is an expedition to foreign lands. These sixty-four poems move through the small empires of a child's world: the garden, the riverbank, the corner where the lamplighter passes, the space beneath the bed where adventures wait. There is joy here, but also a faint current of melancholy, the knowledge that these moments are already slipping away even as they happen. Stevenson dedicated these verses to his childhood nurse, Alison Cunningham, and the dedication feels right: this is a book written from the territory of deep affection and deep memory. The poems have been imitated countless times but never matched, because the trick is not in the technique but in the sympathy. It speaks to anyone who has ever been small in a large world and found that largeness wonderful.
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“The world is so full of a number of things, I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“The rain is falling all around,It falls on field and tree,It rains on the umbrellas here,And on the ships at sea.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“In winter I get up at night,and dress by yellow candlelight,In summer, quite the other day,I have to go to bed by day””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“To My MotherYou too, my mother, read my rhymesFor love of unforgotten times,And you may chance to hear once moreThe little feet along the floor.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Time which none can bind,While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“How do you like to go up in a swing,Up in the air so blue?Oh, I do think it is the pleasantest thingEver a child can do!””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Time to Rise A birdie with a yellow bill Hopped upon my window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: "Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5Cite this book
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Stevenson, Robert Louis. A Child's Garden of Verses. Lex, lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5.Stevenson, R. L. (1885). A Child's Garden of Verses. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5Stevenson, Robert Louis. A Child's Garden of Verses. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-child-s-garden-of-verses-2cdd8ed4-0aed-44a7-905b-3a4318cad2d5.
