✦ A Classic Poem ✦

The Land of Nod

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

Every night a child travels alone to the Land of Nod, the land of dreams, full of strange sights and curious music that can never be remembered by day.

Watch the Read-Aloud Read the Poem

Read aloud by Storyland Classics ✦ 1 min 25 sec ✦ Watch on YouTube

✦ The Poem ✦

The Land of Nod

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

From breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad 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 many 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.

✦ About the Poem ✦

Traveling to Dreamland

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 land of Nod” has long been a playful name for sleep. Stevenson treats dreams as a real place a child visits alone each night, with streams and mountains and strange things to eat and see. The last verse captures something everyone knows: you can never quite find your way back to a dream once you wake.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

Why does the child have to go to the Land of Nod alone?
What kinds of things does the child find there?
Can you remember a dream? Where did it take you?

✦ 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.