To Any Reader

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

    I love this poem. Robert Louis Stevenson manages to combine the essence of childhood - playing in the garden under the loving eye of a parent - with the nostalgia and wistfulness of looking back as an adult.

© Amanda J Harrington 2020

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