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Home  »  A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods  »  III. The Canoe Speaks

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

III. The Canoe Speaks

ON the great streams the ships may go

About men’s business to and fro.

But I, the egg-shell pinnace, sleep

On crystal waters ankle-deep:

I, whose diminutive design,

Of sweeter cedar, pithier pine,

Is fashioned on so frail a mould,

A hand may launch, a hand withhold:

I, rather, with the leaping trout

Wind, among lilies, in and out;

I, the unnamed, inviolate,

Green, rustic rivers, navigate;

My dipping paddle scarcely shakes

The berry in the bramble-brakes;

Still forth on my green way I wend

Beside the cottage garden-end;

And by the nested angler fare,

And take the lovers unaware.

By willow wood and water-wheel

Speedily fleets my touching keel:

By all retired and shady spots

Where prosper dim forget-me-nots;

By meadows where at afternoon

The growing maidens troop in June

To loose their girdles on the grass.

Ah! speedier than before the glass

The backward toilet goes; and swift

As swallows quiver, robe and shift

And the rough country stockings lie

Around each young divinity.

When, following the recondite brook,

Sudden upon this scene I look,

And light with unfamiliar face

On chaste Diana’s bathing-place,

Loud ring the hills about and all

The shallows are abandoned.…