Poetic Tides Through Time

Foreign Lands

Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad in foreign lands.

I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.

I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the shy's blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town.

If I could find a higher tree,
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships;

To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.

                             Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-1894]

From: The Home Book of Verse by Burton Egbert Stevenson, 1917, pg. 161

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         Day 6 - "Foreign Lands"  reminds me of a favorite activity of mine. I loved to climb the cherry trees at my grandfather's home and often would get lost for hours in the trees, tucked into the crook of a branch reading a book. Robert Louis Stevenson captures how I felt about the magical world that sheltered me as a child.