A Child's Garden of Verses

I'm glad I waited to review this one. I picked it up to read to my son, and his attention wandered, and he was just not up for it, and I was like "no wonder, Robert Louis Stevenson, your whole book is obviously aimed at Victorian grown-ups and their nostalgia for things like climbing trees and visiting the farm that baby Emmett hasn't even experienced yet." But my mum kept telling me how much I loved this book when I was small, and we kept reading, and over nights Stevenson worked his weirding way on both of us: Emmett (as I fancy it--let's face it, he can't even talk yet) feeling himself into the poems through the big, splashy, soft-focus fairy-pictures with their blues and greens and weird perspectives and distant horizons (and the show more fact is, if he doesn't know yet from farms or trees or penny-cannons, there are a lot of things here that are already part of his everyday: blocks, the rain, the moon, his little shadow, bedtime. And if the prescriptive intent behind all the "nursie" and fairyland and "ships at sea" stuff can get a little cloying--English childhood is an English garden, practice for when English children will leave to conquer and catalogue and administrate the earth!--it is certainly not that Stevenson was an overt imperialist, merely a man of his times. And the ships speak to me too, and remind me to be vigilant to the ways in which children open the door for their parents to embrace conservatism via halcyon-days sentimentality. And in fact, the overt prescriptiveness can be charming: in 2015 we are already more than primed for a statement of creed like "kids love blocks," it has moved from cliché to archetype and needs the merest oblique mention to activate our frames around it. In 1885? The sentimentalization of children as a whole was a relatively new thing; and Stevenson's way of talking about blocks as though no one has ever talked about blocks before in the history of childhood has a courtly formality: "What are you able to build with your blocks?" his opening gambit in the elaboration of the highly moral thesis "blocks are a tool of the imagination." Like, every time I get to the poem about the enigmatic rider I have to remind myself that he's not a headless horseman (although this does, of course, postdate Ichabod Crane); today he would have to be to get the kids to put down the ipad and listen, and the HH has become in fact a stock character, familiar/lovable/entirely unremarkable/not even scary. The fact that a mere headful horseguy riding by night can conjure up a world of mystery feels so fresh and sincere and simple, like drinking cold water, and if I didn't manage to avoid the curmudgeonly ipad grumbling entirely in this review, I will just say that horseman–ipad–starry night sky, it's all equally as new to my boy.

And the ultimate point here is that now the soft trundling doggerel of it is the only book he has that actually puts him to sleep and doesn't stir up the blood like Go Dog Go! and suchlike, and when you read to him from A Child's Garden he cuddles up and looks at the pictures and drifts away and he is happy. show less

My edition different cover, with an assortment of classic illustrations chosen by Cooper Edens.
My review from the Children's Books discussion for Poetry month:

Emphasizes the sentimental and the nostalgic. That may be appropriate, and a good way to sell the book to the ppl with the money... but I'm not sure if it helps today's children appreciate the timelessness of the verses.

I would have loved any edition of this when my children were tiny. Reading it now, I feel as if I deprived my kids!

Even nursing infants could appreciate the sounds, the rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration of the poems as read aloud. It won't be long before some of the lines stick in their heads... even if they don't understand them.

And toddlers can enjoy many of the show more concepts... and preschoolers more... and some of the poems are worth a teen student's time. Owning whichever edition of this you prefer is like owning a big book of Mother Goose rhymes, and another big book, or collection, of famous fairy tales... it's almost a must!

Many of the poems have been reprinted in other collections, including the Nat'l Geog. we read upthread. But many are new to me, too. show less

Stevenson can not simply sit quietly on a shelf. His works beg to be lifted and opened for new worlds to discover. As a child, he was lonely and ill and many of the poems in this collection for children exude that sense of isolation.

I'm sure everyone has their favorites, but mine was always THE LAMPLIGHTER. At my school in Melbourne, we would have a midday break of tea and biscuits, and my teacher would recite the beginning of this poem. It was Stevenson's ode to a world quickly changing, as electricity replaced gaslamps in the late 19th century.

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky

While trying to get some semblance of order for my books, I found this rare gem. Copyrighted in 1900, the paper is older and semi glossy; the illustrations are simple and lovely. My copy is in poor condition, but none of the pages are missing.

It was incredibly delightful to spend time savoring each delightful poem. While simply written, each sentence paints a lush portrait of serenity and reminds the reader of a childhood of dreams and time spent exploring through the imagination. Many of the missives contain images of night and sleeping.

Here is one of my favorites:

North-West Passage

When the bright lamp is carried in,
The sunless ours again begin;
O'er all without, in field and lane,
The haunted night returns again.

Now we behold the show more embers flee
About the firelit hearth; and see
Our faces painted as we pass,
Like pictures, on the window-glass.

Must we go to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage up to bed.

Farewell, O brother, sister, sire!
O pleasant party round the fire!
The songs you sing, the tales you tell,
Till far to-morrow, fare ye well! show less

I have read this book to all five of my children when they are about 5 or 6 years old. It is a wonderful introduction to poetry and lovely look at the world through a child's eyes. Several of my children even memorized some of the poems and still talk fondly of them many years later.

Here is a delightful look at childhood, written by master poet and storyteller Robert Louis Stevenson. In this collection of sixty-six poems, Stevenson recalls the joys of his childhood, from sailing boats down a river, to waiting for the lamplighter, to sailing off to foreign lands in his imagination.

"Everything was grey. There wasn't any colour. It was all up to my imagination.”
Brian Wildsmith, artist, on his childhood.

Image: Summer Sun

This review is an excuse to share some of the startling and colourful illustrations that Wildsmith crafted for this 1966 edition (words here). A truly wild smith. I can’t imagine what Robert Louis Stevenson would make of them, but I hope he would appreciate the edge they give to his words.

Image: The Cow
The poem leaves me cold, but the happy cow in her bucolic meadow, I love.

The poems are mostly delightful. Many are familiar from repetition in my childhood, then to my child. We had plenty of other books of rhymes, but it was primarily the extravagant illustrations that drew me repeatedly to the show more pages, and the words I learned so well.

Image: The Land of the Counterpane
I think this made me something of a hypochondriac as a child - though I’m quite the reverse as an adult.

When I’ve seen modern editions, they’re invariably illustrated with competent, sometimes lovely pictures, but they're safe and predictable. Just what you expect for a cosy Victorian classic.

Image: Armies in the Fire
I loved pareidolia long before I knew there was a word for it; perhaps this is why?

I think the dissonance of Wildsmith’s pictures and Stevenson's verses add the vibrant joy and confusing kaleidoscope of childhood, and sometimes add modern relevance to the words themselves.

Image: Whole Duty of Children
A dry Victorian instruction with a subversive twist.

The child is always clearly recognisable, a character to identify with, but the backgrounds are often more abstract. There are echoes of Klimt, Turner, Miro, and Matisse, yet they are very much Wildsmith’s own.

Image: Looking-Glass River
An example where the words do little for me, but the picture is lush.

My Favourite

I was a tomboy, who loved cars, tractors, and trains. This was my favourite poem, and as an adult, I think the words, rhythm, and imagery are superb. You can't read it slowly, nor should you:

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 run away 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!

Image: From a Railway Carriage

Then I went to Tate Britain for the first of many times (probably around seven years old) and saw this. The two are forever, happily, linked in my mind:

Image: Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, by JMW Turner

The Verses

See Ted's excellent review, HERE, which is what prompted me to get out my copy and post this.

All the poems are free on Gutenberg, HERE. show less