Scottish Poetry Selection
- The Flowers

Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" contains many poems which describe the world through the eyes of the younger generation. Here is one in which conveys the magic of a flower garden.


The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames -
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, roses or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

Return to the Index of Scottish Poetry Selection




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