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✦ A Classic Poem ✦

Escape at Bedtime

A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885

One night a child slips outside and sees the sky full of stars, more than all the leaves on a tree. A poem about the wonder of being out after dark.

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✦ The Poem ✦

Escape at Bedtime

by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885). Public domain.

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out Through the blinds and the windows and bars; And high overhead and all moving about, There were thousands of millions of stars. There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree, Nor of people in church or the Park, As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me, And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all, And the star of the sailor, and Mars, These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall Would be half full of water and stars. They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries, And they soon had me packed into bed; But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes, And the stars going round in my head.

✦ About the Poem ✦

Stars Worth Getting Caught For

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is best known for Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but A Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1885, may be his most loved book. He was often ill as a boy in Edinburgh and spent long days in bed, and these poems remember childhood from the inside, in a child’s own voice.

The child in this poem knows the names of the star patterns: the Dog (Sirius), the Plough (the Big Dipper), the Hunter (Orion), and the sailor’s star (the North Star). Being caught and carried back to bed hardly matters, because the stars keep shining inside the child’s head long after the lights go out.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

  • Where did the child see stars reflected?
  • Can you find the Plough (the Big Dipper) or the Hunter (Orion) in the night sky?
  • Why do you think the stars kept “going round” in the child’s head?

✦ Keep Reading ✦

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