My Shadow – Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

My Shadow - Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

My Shadow – Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith
from A child’s garden of verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1905

My Shadow
from A child’s garden of verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1905

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow –
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there ‘s none of him at all.

He has n’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.