To Willie and Henrietta

Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885

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

18 content lines · 93 words · Est. recitation about 58 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.

To Willie and Henrietta

       If two may read aright
       These rhymes of old delight
       And house and garden play,
  You two, my cousins, and you only, may.

       You in a garden green
       With me were king and queen,
       Were hunter, soldier, tar,
  And all the thousand things that children are.

       Now in the elders' seat
       We rest with quiet feet,
       And from the window-bay
  We watch the children, our successors, play.

       "Time was," the golden head
       Irrevocably said;
       But time which one can bind,
  While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.


                                            II