{
 "id": "robert-louis-stevenson/envoy-for-a-childs-garden-of-verses",
 "title": "Envoy for “A Child’s Garden of Verses”",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert Louis Stevenson",
 "poet_slug": "robert-louis-stevenson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems and Variant Readings",
 "book_slug": "new-poems-and-variant-readings",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "New Poems and Variant Readings (1918)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1918 Chatto & Windus volume. That is not the first printing: this volume's own preface credits the Bibliophile Society of Boston with having first given these poems light in a privately printed edition. The year of that edition, and which poems it carried, are not established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-louis-stevenson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlvol28stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/worksofrobertlou14stev",
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoemsandvaria00stevuoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemshithertounp00stevrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31291",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30659",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/441",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems,_by_Robert_Louis_Stevenson,_hitherto_unpublished"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 44,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 41,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Whether upon the garden seat",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You lounge with your uplifted feet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Under the May’s whole Heaven of blue;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or whether on the sofa you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No grown up person being by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do some soft corner occupy;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take you this volume in your hands",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And enter into other lands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For lo! (as children feign) suppose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You, hunting in the garden rows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or in the lumbered attic, or",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cellar⁠—a nail-studded door",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And dark, descending stairway found",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That led to kingdoms underground:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There standing, you should hear with ease",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strange birds a-singing, or the trees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swing in big robber woods, or bells",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On many fairy citadels:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There passing through (a step or so⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neither mamma nor nurse need know!)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From your nice nurseries you would pass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like Alice through the Looking-Glass",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or Gerda following Little Ray,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To wondrous countries far away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Well, and just so this volume can",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Transport each little maid or man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Presto from where they live away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where other children used to play.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As from the house your mother sees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You playing round the garden trees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So you may see if you but look",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the windows of this book",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Another child far, far away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in another garden play.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But do not think you can at all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By knocking on the window, call",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That child to hear you. He intent",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is still on his play-business bent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He does not hear, he will not look,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor yet be lured out of this book.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For long ago, the truth to say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He has grown up and gone away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And it is but a child of air",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That lingers in the garden there.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}