Audiobook · read by volunteers
Foreign Lands
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
Read by C.L.Coney, Caitlin Hier, Chris Chapman, Elizabeth Palmer, Ezwa, Howard Dratch, JemmaBlythe, Jennette Selig, Kimm Viebrock, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021) · 17 chapters · 16 min
About the book
Foreign Lands is a short poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, taken from A Child's Garden of Verses, in which a child climbs up into a cherry tree and imagines what lies beyond the hedges and fences of home. From that high perch he sees the river, the road and the ships and wonders about the countries of the world. The verses are simple, rhythmic and full of wonder, and they sound entirely natural when spoken. Here you can listen to seventeen different recordings of it, each by a volunteer and each with its own pace and manner, collected for a weekly poetry project. A whole set can be heard in under twenty minutes, so it is easy to enjoy them back to back. It is a joyful listen for children, and a pleasure for adults who remember the daydreams of their own youth.
Introduction
Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived from 1850 to 1894, was a Scottish writer, famous for Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He also wrote poetry, travel books and essays. Foreign Lands comes from his collection of poems for children, published in 1885.
The poem is written in short rhyming lines, from the point of view of a child, and it shows Stevenson's talent for entering a young person's imagination. Many poems in the collection deal with games, illness, bedtime and make-believe, and they have been loved by generations of readers because they treat children's feelings with respect.
This is a multi-version recording. It contains seventeen readings of the same poem, each named for the volunteer who made it, and was produced for the weekly poetry project of late April 2007. Hearing so many voices in succession lets you notice how the same lines can sound playful, dreamy or thoughtful. It is also a good example of how LibriVox volunteers can bring variety to even the shortest text. Children will like the idea of looking at the world from a high branch, and adults may remember similar moments from their own childhood. The poem is simple enough to learn by heart, and hearing it many times is one way to do so. This collection is a small but charming example of what many different readers can do with a single poem.
Public domain
Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text