✦ A Classic Poem ✦

Foreign Lands

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

A child climbs the cherry tree and sees the whole world from the top: gardens, the river, the dusty roads, and maybe fairyland beyond.

Watch the Read-Aloud Read the Poem

Read aloud by Storyland Classics ✦ 1 min 50 sec ✦ Watch on YouTube

✦ The Poem ✦

Foreign Lands

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

Up into the cherry tree Who should climb but little me? I held the trunk with both my hands And looked abroad on foreign lands.

I saw the next door garden lie, Adorned with flowers, before my eye, And many pleasant places more That I had never seen before.

I saw the dimpling river pass And be the sky’s blue looking-glass; The dusty roads go up and down With people tramping in to town.

If I could find a higher tree Farther and farther I should see, To where the grown-up river slips Into the sea among the ships,

To where the roads on either hand Lead onward into fairy land, Where all the children dine at five, And all the playthings come alive.

✦ About the Poem ✦

The View from the Top

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.

To a small child, the garden next door really is a foreign land. The poem starts with what the child can actually see and then lets imagination take over: a higher tree would show the river reaching the sea, and the roads leading to a place where playthings come alive.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

What could the child see from the cherry tree?
What does Stevenson mean when he calls the river the sky’s “looking-glass”?
If you climbed a very tall tree, what “foreign lands” would you see?

✦ Keep Reading ✦

More Poems to Enjoy

My Shadow

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

Bed in Summer

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

All Poems

Browse every poem in the Storyland Classics library.