Poems for Children (Mercat Press) (Mercat Press) (Paperback)

The editors, Tom and Claire Hubbard, have chosen poems from throughout the range of Stevenson’s poetry, including favourite poems from A Child’s Garden but also searching out less well-known gems. From the lighthouse keeper sitting in the ‘brilliant kernel of the night’ to the defiant keepers of the secret of ‘Heather Ale’, from the sailors hauling frozen ropes in ‘Christmas at Sea’ to the lad on the rocking deck going ‘Over the Sea to Skye’, Stevenson’s poems cover a world of subjects and styles.

Stevenson himself, after he left his native Edinburgh, was always a man on the move. But, though he lived in many countries, as Tom Hubbard says: ‘He always remembered his native Scotland; he loved to travel but that didn’t stop him feeling homesick whenever he was abroad… We hope that our book will give you an idea of Stevenson’s love of foreign lands, but also a taste of the country which he saw for the last time seven years before his death, the country which he never forgot when he was living at the other side of the world.’ For all that Stevenson was a citizen of the world, he remained a Scottish writer to the end.

Tom Hubbard is already a well-respected literary editor. Claire, his daughter, is less widely known—she is only 10 years old, and still at school! They went through the poems together, discussing which ones they liked best, and only included those which both felt would fire the imaginations of children and adults alike. This is the second book which Claire has helped edit—the first, also with her father, was William Soutar’s A Bairn’s Sang and Other Poems in the same Mercat Press series.

EXCERPT:

THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still

That sits upon the pillow-hill,

And sees before him, dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

THE LAMPLIGHTER

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

It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;

For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,

With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,

And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;

But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,

O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,

And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;

And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light;

O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!