✦ A Classic Poem ✦

The Lamplighter

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

Every evening at teatime, Leerie the lamplighter comes up the street with his ladder to light the lamps. A child watches from the window and dreams of joining him.

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✦ The Poem ✦

The Lamplighter

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

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by; For every night at teatime and before you take your seat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea, And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be; But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do, O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door, And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more; And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light, O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

✦ About the Poem ✦

The Man Who Lit the Street

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.

In Stevenson’s Edinburgh, street lamps burned gas and had to be lit one at a time by hand. The lamplighters, nicknamed “leeries” in Scotland, made their rounds at dusk with a ladder and a flame. Of all the grown-up jobs in the poem, the child picks the one that brings light to the dark.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

What did Leerie carry with him every night?
What do Tom and Maria want to be? What does the child want to be?
What job would you choose, and why?

✦ Keep Reading ✦

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