Robert Louis Stevenson's "To Any Reader"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2023

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.

A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.

-bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.1	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, November 13, 2023.
0:09.7	This is the birthday of Robert Lewis Stevenson, the great Scottish poet and novelist.
0:16.2	The poem I'm reading today is by said Scotsman, and it's the final poem in his lovely collection of children's poetry,
0:25.4	A Child's Garden of Verses.
0:27.9	It's entitled To Any Reader.
0:30.7	I'll read it once, say this or that, and then read it a second time.
0:36.5	To any reader.
0:38.3	As from the house your mother sees you playing round the garden trees,
0:44.3	so you may see if you will look through the windows of this book,
0:48.3	another child far, far away, and in another garden play.
0:53.3	But do not think you can at all by knocking on the window,
0:57.9	call that child to hear you. He intent is all on his play business bent. He does not hear,
1:04.4	he will not look, nor yet be lured out of this book. For long ago, the truth to say,
1:12.5	he has grown up and gone away,
1:16.9	and it is but a child of air that lingers in the garden there.
1:29.9	There's a note of melancholy in this poem, especially given the context coming at the end of a collection of children's poems that are most of them rather whimsical and usually pretty happy or
1:39.5	lighthearted. But here, Stevenson draws attention to himself as the poet and the speaker and entertains the idea that there's some way in which he has accessed his own childhood and made it present or visible to the reader of his poems.
2:06.6	But then sort of closes the door on that access by reminding us that he is no longer a child.
2:16.1	That child, the young Bobby Stevenson, who pokes his head through the windows of these poems, has ceased to exist.
2:27.3	He has grown up and gone away long ago, truth to say, which has a kind of note of sadness, though.
2:37.7	He does conclude by saying there is this garden of poetry that he still lingers in.
	...

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