Lyric Poem · For Kids

Good and Bad Children

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Reading room

1Children, you are very little,

2And your bones are very brittle;

3If you would grow great and stately,

4You must try to walk sedately.

5You must still be bright and quiet,

6And content with simple diet;

7And remain, through all bewild'ring,

8Innocent and honest children.

9Happy hearts and happy faces,

10Happy play in grassy places —

11That was how in ancient ages,

12Children grew to kings and sages.

13But the unkind and the unruly,

14And the sort who eat unduly,

15They must never hope for glory —

16Theirs is quite a different story!

17Cruel children, crying babies,

18All grow up as geese and gabies,

19Hated, as their age increases,

20By their nephews and their nieces.

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“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

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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).

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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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Lyric Poem For Kids Childhood Love Hope

Good and Bad Children

Quick facts

How this poem works

A traceable edition

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