"Do I look sick?" asked Robert Louis Stevenson to his worried wife, Mrs. Fanny Osbourne. He had had a stroke and soon died. It was Dec. 3, 1894 and he was at the young age of 44. His life was very unusual. His childhood was not at all like a typical child's life. He suffered a bad sickness of lung disease. He spent most of his childhood sick and in bed. He was not able to attend a regular school because of his sickness. Yet he was very bright and a gifted storyteller. He wrote many books and one book of poems called A Child's Garden of Verses. He wrote poems about simple child like things, such as their play, manners, sleeping, meals, and so on. Yet I think that since he never got to enjoy the regular life of a child he made them up and wrote them down as poems.

    When Robert Louis Stevenson grew older he went to Edinburgh University. He tried to take engineering but soon it became clear that his condition could not handle being a engineer. He tried out for law and later admitted that he didn't like law. So he decided to do what he loved the most, writing.

    Robert Louis Stevenson married Mrs. Fanny Osbourne. She was divorced and had two children because she was divorced. They soon became Robert's step children. Their family traveled a great deal searching for a place with a climate that fit Robert's condition.

    Robert's childhood mostly influenced his writing because he missed out on a lot of it so he liked to think about what he would have done. Robert mostly wrote rhyming poems. In his writing was much personification and a metaphors and similes.

Here is one poem for an example:

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more then I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow,
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
for sometimes he shoots up taller like an Indian rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there is none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
he stays so close behind me he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow like an arrant sleepy-head,
had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

    Robert Louis Stevenson used some personification when he said the shadow grew and shrank. This poem makes me feel the children aren't that smart yet have an endless brain. I mean, they never stop thinking and the curiosity can never be caught in a jar and capped. I liked it because he turned something so simple, like a shadow, and turned it into a wonderful poem.

   I noticed that Robert Louis Stevenson was a very talented poet to write such beautiful poems. Also I kind of feel bad that he missed out on such an exiting part of life, childhood.

    Robert Louis Stevenson wrote many books: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses, and The Master of Ballantrae. We should all remember that Robert Louis Stevenson was a very bright and exciting man and that he wrote many wonderful books and poems.

Some poems of Stevenson I have read:

  • My shadow
  • My Bed is A Boat
  • The Swing
  • Looking Glass River
  • My Treasures
  • The Hayloft
  • My Ship and I
  • The Cow
  • Nest Eggs
  • Keepsake Mill

Researched and written by Lisa