Two Things

On the flight back to Pennsylvania I read Under the Wide and Starry Sky, a novel by Nancy Horan, about Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, etc.),  and the American woman he fell in love with and married.

I like the book very much, have given it to Ann and bought a copy for Alyce's mother-in-law.

When I was a child, we played a card game called Authors and Robert Louis Stevenson was among those authors whose names I learned early in my life. And so he became, so to speak, mine.

Back then I also read some of his poems in A Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson, known as Louis in the novel, was an only child and was sick as a child, troubled by tuberculosis, from which he suffered all his life, thriving when at sea and eventually settling in Samoa, where he could breathe and have fewer traumatic episodes.

One of his most famous poems reflects his childhood of constant illness. It's a favorite of mine. I learned it as a child. I'm sure many of you know it, too.

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

*     *     *

Benjamin Saxby Larsen is two weeks old. They wrap him, swaddle him. That's the way with infants, you know. But he has a mind of his own and always works to get his hands out. Then he may put one or both hands by his cheek to sleep.

It is cute.