Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ENVOY: 5. TO MY NAME-CHILD, by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ENVOY: 5. TO MY NAME-CHILD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed
Last Line: Beach of monterey!
Alternate Author Name(s): Stevenson, Robert Lewis Balfour
Subject(s): Names


1

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.

In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.

Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?


2

Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific sef Louis on the
beach of Monterey!





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