✦ A Classic Poem ✦

The Hayloft

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

After the hay is cut, it is piled high in the barn, and the hayloft becomes a range of mountains for a child to climb. A happy poem of summer play.

Watch the Read-Aloud Read the Poem

Read aloud by Storyland Classics ✦ 1 min 23 sec ✦ Watch on YouTube

✦ The Poem ✦

The Hayloft

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

Through all the pleasant meadow-side The grass grew shoulder-high, Till the shining scythes went far and wide And cut it down to dry.

These green and sweetly smelling crops They led in waggons home; And they piled them here in mountain tops For mountaineers to roam.

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail, Mount Eagle and Mount High;— The mice that in these mountains dwell, No happier are than I!

Oh, what a joy to clamber there, Oh, what a place for play, With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air, The happy hills of hay!

✦ About the Poem ✦

Mountains Made of Hay

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.

Before machines, hay was cut by hand with long curved blades called scythes, dried in the sun, and hauled to the barn in wagons. To the child, each heap becomes a mountain with its own name, and the poem ends with the smell and dust of a barn on a summer day.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

How was the hay cut, and how did it get to the barn?
The child gives each pile of hay a mountain name. Which name is your favorite?
Where is your favorite place to play, and what would you name its “mountains”?

✦ Keep Reading ✦

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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.