Give a description of the river of the poem where go the boats?
Answers
It flows along forever,
With trees on either hand.
Green leaves floating,
Castles of the foam.
Boats of mine boating.
Where will all come home?
On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.
Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.
Situation
A young boy is sitting on the bank of a river. He is making boats out of pieces of paper. He puts each boat onto the water and watches as the current carries it downstream and out of sight. What eventually happens to his boats? Do they reach the sea or do they sink in the swirling water? There is no way he can find out.
Perhaps downstream there is another boy sitting on the bank of the same river. Perhaps this boy reaches into the water and takes the boats out of the river. The first boy will never know. All he can do is imagine what happens to his paper boats as the river carries them into the future.
The poet
Born in Scotland into a well-off family in 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson studied engineering at Edinburgh University. But he showed no interest in his studies - what he really wanted to do was travel and write.
In 1871, he announced to his disappointed family that he intended to forget about engineering as a career and take up writing. He wrote essays, travel articles and adventure novels, three of which - Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Treasure Island - became world-famous.
Stevenson also published a popular book of poems, A Child's Garden of Verse.
Suffering badly from tuberculosis, he spent many years travelling from one country to another, searching for the best climate to suit his illness. He finally settled down on the Pacific island of Samoa, where he died in 1894.