R.L. Stevenson: A Child's Memory of Verses

Like any red-blooded American boy in the age before ubiquitous color television, I devoured action-adventure novels by Robert Louis Stevenson. His Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were always checked out of the school library by me or my friends.

But my fondest memories are of a little book, the Child’s Garden of Verses, that sat on the second shelf in the back hallway of my grandmother's house. To a six-year-old boy seeking relief from the grimness of Grimm, Stevenson’s airy word-pictures captured perfectly a childhood in the Hawaiian sun:

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

[Above right: photo of Stevenson monument in Portsmouth Square, San Francisco]