Good and Bad Children
Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 (Edinburgh) – 1894 (Vailima, Samoa)
Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle;
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.
You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewild'ring,
Innocent and honest children.
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places--
That was how in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
But the unkind and the unruly,
And the sort who eat unduly,
They must never hope for glory--
Theirs is quite a different story!
Cruel children, crying babies,
All grow up as geese and gabies,
Hated, as their age increases,
By their nephews and their nieces.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 116 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABB CCXX DDDE BBBB XDDE |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 654 |
Words | 115 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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