Picture Books,  Poetry

Poetry Friday: Land of Counterpane

My youngest is sick today. This means missing our last homeschool co-op of the year, a birthday party this afternoon, and possibly Presentation Day tomorrow. She has a knack for falling ill on special occasions, but the familiarity of this scenario doesn’t make it any easier.

In her honor, I’m posting the classic children’s sick day poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. I love “The Land of Counterpane” because it acknowledges that even being taken out of the game for a day has a certain luxury. Rest, imagine, play in a desultory fashion — though around here it’s plastic horses, not “leaden soldiers.” Being sick also means more television than is usually allowed, to “keep one happy all the day.” And later, we’ll have a “book party,” another of the consolations of sickness. We’ll be sure to revisit A Child’s Garden of Verses:

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Jessie Willcox Smith illustration courtesy of Wikipedia

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