A Child's Garden of Verses
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A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a remarkable collection of 64 poems about childhood emotions. It is a terrific book for improving one's phonetic reading skills. These poems are freely available on the internet but Dover Publications' $4 large-print edition is highly recommended,[1] which has the additional advantage of using Roman numerals for each poem that encourages learning of those.
As observed by the Encyclopedia Britannica:
| â | The poems in A Childâs Garden represent with extraordinary fidelity an adultâs recapturing of the emotions and sensations of childhood; there is nothing else quite like them in English literature.[2] | â |
Examples
Many of 64 poems in this collection are extraordinary, including:
- The Unseen Playmate, which is a poem about a child's invisible friend.
- The Little Land, which is a humorous long poem describing how the child prefers his imagination, to convert the dreary into adventure, instead of the nonsensical conversation of adults.
- Summer Sun, a remarkable tribute to the sun, with fabulous metaphors.
- The Dumb Soldier, a very charming description of a toy soldier buried by a child, containing many clever rhymes in this longer-than-average poem
Vocabulary
In order as they occur in this Dover Publications edition:
- lea[3]
- dimpling river[4]
- looking-glass[5]
- minaret[6]
- palanquin[7]
- billow[8]
- mill[9]
- trundle[10]
- leaden[11]
- dale[12]
- counterpane[13]
- thrush[14]
- martial[15]
- Grenadier[16]
- lowing[17]
- keepsake[18]
- weir[19]
- sluice[20]
- moil[21]
- gaily[22]
- gaby[23]
- quay[24]
- wimple
fill in vocabulary words here from the poems on pp. 37-68 (Dover Publications edition)
British spelling
The author was British (Scottish, to be precise) and thus his spellings are British English rather than American English. Examples of the British English include:
- "waggon" rather than "wagon"
- "colour" rather than "color
Generally American spelling is more concise. But the British spelling is just as phonetic.
See also
References
- â www.doverpublications.com, Children's Thrift Classics, Unabridged, In Easy-to-Read Type (ISBN-13: 978-0-486-27401-3.
- â https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Louis-Stevenson
- â pronounced "lee", meaning a grassland, meadow, or open field.
- â meaning a river with surface indentations, perhaps due to rain, fish, or rapidly flowing.
- â meaning a mirror, and due to Lewis Carroll can have a connotation of a mirror that distorts.
- â pronounced phonetically, mÄnâ³É-rÄtâ², meaning a tall, thin tower next to a mosque and used as symbolic call to prayer, analogous to a Christian belfry.
- â pronounced pÄlâ³Én-kÄnâ² (rhymes with "seen" in the 10th poem, meaning a covered men-carried vehicle for a special person in a caravan, as used in India.
- â to bulge or swell outward, typically as the result of wind (e.g., smoke and clouds)
- â a building for grinding grain into flour, or after the industrial revolution could mean grinding or shaping metal also (such as a steel mill)
- â meaning to move noisily and heavily, and in an uneven way
- â pronounced non-phonetically with the "a" silent, led-un, meaning slow, heavy, and/or dull
- â a valley, typically broad (e.g., "over hill, over dale, we will meet the dusty trail" - John Philip Sousa (1917), the "U.S. Field Artillery March."
- â a bedspread, part of the title and last line of poem XVI
- â a smallish, loud songbird, whose back is brown and having a spotted breast
- â warlike
- â a soldier, typically with strong throwing arms, who carries hand grenades or a grenade-launcher
- â mooing - making a deep sound as cows do
- â something kept for the sake of its good memories
- â a low dam that allows water to flow over it, and which raises the water level upstream
- â pronounced slooce, a sliding gate that controls water flow, as in a lock gate
- â work hard (if a noun, then hard work or drudgery)
- â cheerfully
- â pronounced with a long "a", gai-bee, meaning a fool or person lacking intelligence. It's part of British dialect and its plural is gabies.
- â pronounced kee, meaning a platform parallel to the bank of sea or river such that boats can be tied and loaded there.
- â a mostly arboreal (living in trees) animal (mammal) that is like a weasel sometimes hunted for its fur
- â a loose blouse or dress, for which smocking is to closely gather the upper part
- â a low-growing herb that has an aroma and is sometimes used as a medicinal oil, grown in the Mediterranean region.
- â a state of rest, or tranquility
- â pronounced syeth (long "i"), meaning a long, curved, sharp blade at the end of a long handle, for manually chopping of long grass, crops, or shrubs
- â a valley, sometimes used as part of a place's name
- â pronounced KUR·uhnt, meaning a small dried fruit that is from a type of seedless grape, first grown in eastern Mediterranean countries and now in California
- â a tall plant from Eurasia that has large, attractive flowers
- â a sailor (short for tarpaulin)