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John Millen

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)
The poem
Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand.
It flows along forever,
With trees on either hand.
Green leaves floating,
Castles of the foam.
Boats of mine boating.
Where will all come home?
On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.
Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.
Situation
A young boy is sitting on the bank of a  river. He is making boats out of pieces of paper. He puts each boat onto the water and watches  as the current carries it downstream and out of sight. What eventually happens to his boats? Do they reach the sea or do they sink in the swirling water? There is no way he can find out. 
Perhaps downstream there is another boy sitting on the bank of the same river. Perhaps this boy reaches into the water and takes the boats out of the river.  The first boy will never know. All he can do is imagine what happens to his paper boats as the river carries them into the future.
The poet
Born in Scotland into a well-off family in 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson studied engineering at Edinburgh University. But he showed no interest in his studies -  what he really wanted to do was travel and write. 
In 1871, he announced to his disappointed family that he intended to forget about engineering as a career and take up writing. He wrote essays, travel articles and adventure novels, three of which - Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Treasure Island - became world-famous. 
Stevenson also published a popular book of poems, A Child's Garden of Verse. 
Suffering badly from tuberculosis, he spent many years travelling from one country to another,  searching for the best climate to suit his illness. He finally settled down on the Pacific island of Samoa, where he died in 1894.
Your turn
1 How many verses does the poem have, and what is its rhyme scheme?
2 How many lines does each verse have?
3 What do the first two lines of the poem do?
4 What does 'on either hand? mean?
a. on either wall
b. on either side
5 What are 'castles of the foam'?
6 'Boating' means ...
a. sinking
b. sailing
7 What does the  third verse do?
8 What is the boy thinking at the end of the poem?
9 How would you describe the vocabulary of the poem?
10 The poem is told from whose point of view?
Where go the balloons?
Where Go the Boats? is an uncomplicated poem written around one simple idea. A boy watches his paper boats sail down a river and wonders where they will end up. Let's change the situation. 
You are holding some helium-filled balloons by their string. You let them go. Watch the balloons as they soar into the sky. Can you write a short poem about what you see and think? It might start off like this: 
Far off is the skyline
Deep blue is the sky
Upwards and forever
No cloud is floating by
Answers:
1. four / ABCB, ABAB, ABCB, ABCB, 2. four, 3. set the scene / describe the river, 4. on either side, 5. patches of froth floating on the river's surface, 6. sailing, 7. describes the river's journey, 8. he is thinking about what will happen to his boats, 9. it is simple and uncomplicated, 10. the boy who makes the boats narrates the poem



Where Go the Boats?