Historical Associations
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885
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.
About this poem
Full text confirmed: 'on tip-toe tread', 'enchanted ground' both appear verbatim; the garden is also populated with Robert Bruce, William Tell, Ali Baba and 'Frozen Siberia'.
A child turns an ordinary garden, the one Uncle Jim smokes his pipe in, into the site of great imagined battles, and asks to lead the way across it on tiptoe. It's a poem about how thoroughly make-believe can take over a real place. Try it outdoors, in an actual garden, with a real corner nominated as the "enchanted ground."
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition