Childhood Memories

By Anthea Noonan Wade, 29/08/2014

THE LAND OF NOD

Robert Louis Stevenson

Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen.

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go aboard
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go
With none to tell me what to do,
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see.
And may frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

All of RLS’s published works became public domain in December 1944, fifty years after his death, so they may be quoted without further permission