Lyric Poem · For Kids
Good and Bad Children
Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle;
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.
You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewild'ring,
Innocent and honest children.
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places —
That was how in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
But the unkind and the unruly,
And the sort who eat unduly,
They must never hope for glory —
Theirs is quite a different story!
Cruel children, crying babies,
All grow up as geese and gabies,
Hated, as their age increases,
By their nephews and their nieces.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Good and Bad Children” by Robert Louis Stevenson — quilloak.com/poems/good-and-bad-children
Quick facts
- Poem
- Good and Bad Children
- Poet
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Length
- 20 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- For Kids, Childhood, Love, Hope
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 · 5 quatrains
- Line length
- Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).
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
- PoetryDBGood and Bad 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 4332d1da80f41ebe…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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