Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I’ve been good,
I get an orange after food.
The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I’m sure—
Or else his dear papa is poor.
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2 thoughts on “System”
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So many of these Child’s Garden verses are so awfully banal, that I’m not entirely sure whether or not this poem is good or rubbish. But there is something about the last line that lends the poem an almost Brechtian directness, irrespective of whether Stevenson intended it; the cloyingly bourgeois tone of the verses here suddenly seems to be almost self-aware; and if it isn’t it speaks volumes.
cf https://haroldraitt.com/poem/foreign-children