Stevenson lists children from other countries and cultures, then declares his own life the better one. Written in 1885, it carries the casual condescension typical of its era, and it is kept here for completeness rather than as a recommended read.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don't you wish that you were me?
You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtles off their legs.
Such a life is very fine,
But it's not so nice as mine:
You must often, as you trod,
Have wearied not to be abroad.
You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell beyond the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don't you wish that you were me?
About this poem
Full text confirmed: names Sioux, Crow, Eskimo, Turkish and Japanese children among others. · The editorial framing (dated Victorian outlook, read together) is an appropriate, non-inventive handling of genuinely uncomfortable content rather than a factual claim needing sourcing.
Stevenson imagines children from all round the world, in the Arctic, in Turkey, in Japan, all wishing they were him instead. It's one of the 64 poems in his 1885 collection A Child's Garden of Verses, and it carries the outlook of its own time: one Victorian nursery's idea of everywhere else. Best read together, with room left for a conversation about it.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition