Good and Bad Children

Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885

Catalog grade guidance: K–5 — Short children’s lyric; good for early memorization and reading aloud.

22 content lines · 118 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 13 sec (approx.)

Public-domain text for reading and recitation practice. Source: Project Gutenberg #136.Estimated time uses ~120 words/minute plus short pauses—not a contest rule.

Good and Bad Children

  Children, you are very little,
  And your bones are very brittle;
  If you would grow great and stately,
  You must try to walk sedately.

  You must still be bright and quiet,
  And content with simple diet;
  And remain, through all bewild'ring,
  Innocent and honest children.

  Happy hearts and happy faces,
  Happy play in grassy places--
  That was how in ancient ages,
  Children grew to kings and sages.

  But the unkind and the unruly,
  And the sort who eat unduly,
  They must never hope for glory--
  Theirs is quite a different story!

  Cruel children, crying babies,
  All grow up as geese and gabies,
  Hated, as their age increases,
  By their nephews and their nieces.


                                          XXVIII