The closing poem of A Child's Garden of Verses, spoken directly to whoever is reading it. Stevenson imagines another child glimpsed through the windows of the book, too absorbed in play to hear you calling, because that child, he says gently, grew up and went away long ago. Better suited to an older child or a grown-up reading aloud than a toddler.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
About this poem
'To Any Reader' is the final poem of A Child's Garden of Verses' closing Envoys section. · Poem's own image is a reader looking 'through the windows of this book' at 'another child...in another garden' who can be seen but not reached.
"To Any Reader" closes A Child's Garden of Verses, and it speaks straight to whoever is holding the book: somewhere else, another child is playing in another garden, and you can watch through the window of these poems but never quite join in. It's Stevenson's own quiet goodbye to the reader.
A nice one to read last, after all the others.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition