5. To My Name-child. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1913. A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894). A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods. 1913.

5. To My Name-child

SOME day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then shall you discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.

In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,	5
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.

Ay, and while you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;	10
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won’t you tell us, mother, please?

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,	15
Tiny sandy-pipers, and the huge Pacific seas.

And remember in your playing, as the seafog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one. nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!	20