My Kingdom
Viewed 135 timesMy Kingdom
Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head.
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom were coming out,
Some yellow and some red.
I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small.
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.
And all about was mine, I said,
The little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.
I played there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me.
At last I heard my mother call
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.
And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms.
Alas! and as my home I neared,
How very big my nurse appeared.
How great and cool the rooms!
Miscellany
Other poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (read randomly)
THOU strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
THOUGH deep indifference should drowse
The sluggish life beneath my brows,
And all the external things I see
A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon my window sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:
I knew thee strong and quiet like the hills;
I knew thee apt to pity, brave to endure,
In peace or war a Roman full equipt;
Friend, in my mountain-side demesne
My plain-beholding, rosy, green
And linnet-haunted garden-ground,
For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake:
For your most comfortable hand
TO all that love the far and blue:
Whether, from dawn to eve, on foot
The fleeing corners ye pursue,
Since long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where'er I went, whate'er I willed,
Dear Andrew, with the brindled hair
Who glory to have thrown in air,
High over arm, the trembling reed,
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
"Chief of our aunts"--not only I,
But all your dozen of nurselings cry--
"What did the other children do?
OUR Johnie's deid. The mair's the pity!
He's deid, an' deid o' Aqua-vitae.
O Embro', you're a shrunken city,
