The Flowers

Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885

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

18 content lines · 91 words · Est. recitation about 57 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.

The Flowers

  All the names I know from nurse:
  Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
  Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
  And the Lady Hollyhock.

  Fairy places, fairy things,
  Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
  Tiny trees for tiny dames--
  These must all be fairy names!

  Tiny woods below whose boughs
  Shady fairies weave a house;
  Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
  Where the braver fairies climb!

  Fair are grown-up people's trees,
  But the fairest woods are these;
  Where, if I were not so tall,
  I should live for good and all.


                                            IV