The Land of Counterpane
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885
A child stuck in bed with an illness turns the pillows and blanket-folds into hills, fleets and whole cities for toy soldiers and ships. It captures how much a bored, imaginative child can build out of almost nothing.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
About this poem
Poem opens 'When I was sick and lay a-bed' - illness, not homesickness. · Toy soldiers march 'among the bed-clothes, through the hills' of the blanket, matching the described conceit.
"The Land of Counterpane" is Stevenson at his best: a sick child, propped up in bed, turning the folds and hills of the blanket into a whole country for his toy soldiers to march across. It's one of the most quoted poems in A Child's Garden of Verses, illness turned into imagination in just a few lines.
Good for any day spent under the covers, not just illness.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition