Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Child's Garden of Verses. To Alison Cunningham

  From Her Boy

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! 

1. Songs of Travel and Other Verses. 13. Mater Triumphans
2. About the Sheltered Garden Ground
3. An English Breeze
4. Sonet VI. As in the Hostel by the Bridge I Sate
5. As One Who Having Wandered All Night Long

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