Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I am David Kerr.

Today's poem is brought to you by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which if you know anything about

Robert Lewis Stevenson's poetry means that this is a poem dedicated to the children who are listening.

I know a pretty good percentage of our listeners out there are kids. And I just want to say,

to all of you kids out there who are listening, thank you for listening. And I love hearing all

the stories from your parents on Facebook about how much you're enjoying the show.

So this poem today is dedicated to you.

Robert Louis Stevenson lived from 1850 to 1894.

He was a novelist, poet, essayist, even a musician, and he even wrote about travel.

He was a travel writer as well.

If you don't know him for his poetry, then you probably know him for books like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, the Strange Case of Dr.

Jacqueline, Mr. Hyde. Or if you do know him for his poetry, then you would know him for

a child's garden of verses. A little factoid for you from Wikipedia, which, you know,

every now and then I like to look up Wikipedia fact. He is the 26th most translated author in the world. 26th. That's pretty good.

So, I suppose, that that means that all around the world, even people who don't read English as

their first language or at all love Stevenson. And in a second, I'm going to

think about why that is with you, or for you, I suppose, after I read this poem that I'm going to

read today. This is called My Shadow. 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's 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.

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