Scottish Poetry Selection
- The Hayloft

Here is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems from "A Child's Garden of Verses" which he wrote while on holiday in Braemar in 1881. All the simple poems are written from the point of view of a child. Anyone who has had the opportunity to clamber around on hay will immediately recognise the picture being painted.


The Hayloft

Through the pleasant meadow-side
The grass grew shoulder high,
Till the shining scythes went far and wide
And cut it down to dry.

The green and sweetly smelling crops
They led the waggons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
Mount Eagle and Mount High:-
The mice that in these mountains dwell,
No happier than I!

O what joy to clamber there,
O what a place for play,
With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
The happy hills of hay.

Return to the Index of Scottish Poetry Selection



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