Shading her anxious eyes;

And saw the shadows deepen

And birds to their homes come back,

Grows faint that cry to hear,

And the bravest man in all the land

Turns white with mortal fear,

taken from his famous book, A Child's Garden of Verses, which, says Professor Saintsbury, "is, perhaps, the most perfectly natural book of the kind. It was supplemented later by other poems for children; and some of his work outside this, culminating in the widely known epitaph Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill, has the rarely combined merits of simplicity, sincerity, music, and strength." One of the best of Stevenson's poems for children outside the Child's Garden of Verses is the powerfully dramatic story called Heather Ale. In attempting to solve the secret of Stevenson's supremacy, Edmund Gosse calls attention to the "curiously candid and confidential attitude of mind" in these poems, to the "extraordinary clearness and precision. with which the immature fancies of eager childhood" are reproduced, and particularly, to the fact that they give us "a transcript of that child-mind which we have all possessed and enjoyed, but of which no one, except Mr. Stevenson, seems to have carried away a photograph." It is this ability to hand on a photographic transcript of the child's way of seeing things that, according to Mr. Gosse, puts Stevenson in a class which contains only two other members, Hans Christian Andersen in nursery stories, and Juliana Horatia Ewing in the more realistic prose tale. Children find expressed in these poems their own active fancies. It has been objected to them that the child pictured there is a lonely child, but every child, like every mature person, has an inner world of dreams and experiences in which he delights now. and then to dwell. The presence of the qualities mentioned put at least two of Stevenson's prose romances among the most splendid adventure stories for young people, Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Perhaps no book is more popular among pupils of the seventh and eighth grades than the former. It has been called a

"sublimated dime novel," that is, it has all the decidedly attractive features of the "dime novel" plus the fine art of storytelling which is always lacking in that sensational type of story.

282

WHOLE DUTY OF CHILDREN

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

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.

283 THE COW

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,

The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,

She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.

284

TIME TO RISE

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window-sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:

"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head?"

285 RAIN

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lion comes to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear Land of Story-books.

290

MY BED IS A BOAT
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark:
She girds me in my sailor's coat
And starts me in the dark.

At night, I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;

I shut my eyes and sail away

And see and hear no more.

And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.

All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
Safe in my room, beside the pier,
I find my vessel fast.

291

MY SHADOW

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children. ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

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!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

292

THE SWING

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue?