A Lifelong Favourite

As a child, one of my sisters had a beautiful illustrated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. Although with an adult's eye some of the poems may seem a little twee, I still find joy in it's contents even today. I think the secret is not only to imagine oneself as a child again, but to imagine oneself as a Upper Middle Class Victorian child.

I could have chosen a number of different poems, but I've gone for this one:


From A Railway Carriage by Robert Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!


Andrew

Read my other poetry selections here.