Historical Associations

ages 5 to 8poetryread aloudabout 48 seconds aloud

A child turns the garden into a stage for history and legend, Ali Baba's rocks and Robert Bruce and William Tell all conjured from a bed of hollyhocks. It plays best for a slightly older child who already knows a few of the names being dropped.

From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.

Dear Uncle Jim, this garden ground
    That now you smoke your pipe around.
    Has seen immortal actions done
    And valiant battles lost and won.

Here we had best on tip-toe tread,
    While I for safety march ahead,
    For this is that enchanted ground
    Where all who loiter slumber sound.

Here is the sea, here is the sand,
    Here is simple Shepherd's Land,
    Here are the fairy hollyhocks,
    And there are Ali Baba's rocks.

But yonder, see! apart and high,
    Frozen Siberia lies; where I,
    With Robert Bruce and William Tell,
    Was bound by an enchanter's spell.

Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition

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