This is Stevenson's dedication to his childhood nurse, Alison Cunningham, who nursed him through long nights of illness. It reads more like a heartfelt letter than a nursery rhyme, so it works best shared as a bit of context before the rest of A Child's Garden of Verses. Older children and grown-ups will get the most from its old-fashioned, tender language.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
_For the long nights you lay awake_
_And watched for my unworthy sake:_
_For your most comfortable hand_
_That led me through the uneven land:_
_For all the story-books you read:_
_For all the pains you comforted:_
_For all you pitied, all you bore,_
_In sad and happy days of yore:—_
_My second Mother, my first Wife,_
_The angel of my infant life—_
_From the sick child, now well and old,_
_Take, nurse, the little book you hold!_
_And grant it, Heaven, that all who read_
_May find as dear a nurse at need,_
_And every child who lists my rhyme,_
_In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,_
_May hear it in as kind a voice_
_As made my childish days rejoice!_
_R. L. S._
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition