A Child's Garden of Verses -- Geometry of a City

Celebrating WORLD POETRY DAY -- with a memory!

     As a child I became acquainted with poetry -- poetry that I came to love -- through a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), an undated edition by Avenel Books that was on our farmhouse bookshelf when I was growing up.

       Block City    by Robert Louis Stevenson  (1850–1894)

            What are you able to build with your blocks?
            Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
            Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
            But I can be happy and building at home.   

            Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
            There I'll establish a city for me:
            A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
            And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.

            Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
            A sort of a tower on top of it all,
            And steps coming down in an orderly way
            To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

            This one is sailing and that one is moored:
            Hark to the song of the sailors on board!
            And see on the steps of my palace, the kings
            Coming and going with presents and things!

            Now I have done with it, down let it go!
            All in a moment the town is laid low.
            Block upon block lying scattered and free,
            What is there left of my town by the sea?

            Yet as I saw it, I see it again,
            The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
            And as long as I live and where'er I may be,
            I'll always remember by town by the sea.

"Block City" and numerous other poems by Stevenson are available online here at poets.org -- however, the version of the above poem at this site has only four stanzas; a complete version of the poem, included in a complete pdf version of A Child's Garden of Verses, is available here.