Lyric Poem · For Kids
Foreign Children
Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don't you wish that you were me?
You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.
Such a life is very fine,
But it's not so nice as mine:
You must often as you trod,
Have wearied NOT to be abroad.
You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell upon the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don't you wish that you were me?
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Foreign Children” by Robert Louis Stevenson — quilloak.com/poems/foreign-children
Quick facts
- Poem
- Foreign Children
- Poet
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Length
- 20 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- For Kids, Nature, Winter, Childhood
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 20 lines · 4 stanzas of 4–8 lines
- Line length
- Mostly 7-syllable lines.
- Refrains
- “Little frosty Eskimo,”“Little Turk or Japanee,”“Oh! don't you wish that you were me?”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894
- Source record
- PoetryDBForeign Children by robert-louis-stevenson, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 6f0285d915d7aa6f…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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