The Land of Nod

Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885

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

18 content lines · 112 words · Est. recitation about 1 min 7 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 Land of Nod

  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 these 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.


                                           XVIII