The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Land of Nod

by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do —

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

Robert Louis Stevenson's book, A Child’s Garden of Verses, first published in 1885, was one of my favorite childood books. This poem and "The Lamplighter" were my two favorite poems in the collection, I think because they both seemed exotic in their own ways.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer, best known for her novels Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He lived from 1850 to 1894, dying so young of a stroke.

This poem captures a child's voice--at least for the time--and their wonder of dreams and even nightmares. As frightening as nightmares can be as an adult, and as curious as dreams can also be, it's difficult to imagine how perplexing they are to children: real and unreal, familiar and strange.

The rhyme scheme for this 4 stanzas is:

AABB

CCDD

EEBB

AAGG

What I find so fascinating now about this poem is the history of the phrase, "land of Nod." It first appears in the Book of Genesis, and refers to a place east of Eden. It is where God sent Cain after he had murdered Abel.

Irish writer Jonathan Swift was the first writer to use it to mean the state of being asleep. It is also why we say, "I nodded off," to mean "I fell asleep." (When you nod off, you are generally talking about falling asleep unexpectantly, while sitting, causing your head to nod.) Swift used the phrase for humorous effect in his 1738 Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation.

I love when writers invent a word or phrase and we can trace it back!

I hope you enjoyed this wee bit of childhood from back in the day.