Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish author who wrote adventure novels and poetry from a child's perspective .His poetry does a wonderful job of capturing a child's world imaginative as well as their realistic world.After reading Stevenson's poem "A Child's Garden of Verses", I like he was able to express his experience as a sickly child in "The Land of Counterpane", Lines 1-4

"The Land of Counterpane"

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

In lines 5-8, you can see how creative the mind of a child is, with the animation of the soldiers being in different uniforms and the drills. In the other verses that a featured, you can relate to the real language of the child's thoughts, how when we were children how we fantasied, and gave life or human qualities to the things that were around us.