All night long and every night,
When my mama puts out the light,
I see the people marching by,
As plain as day, before my eye.

Armies and [emperors]1 and kings,
All carrying different kinds of things,
And marching in so grand a way,
You never saw the like by day.

So fine a show was never seen
At the great circus on the green;
[For]2 every kind of beast and man
Is marching in that caravan.

At first they move a little slow,
But still the faster on they go,
And still beside [them]4 close I keep
Until we reach the town of Sleep.

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Confirmed with Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods, New York: Current Literature, 1913.

¹ Hadley: "emperor"
² omitted by F. Rzewski
⁴ Hadley: "me"

Text Authorship:

• by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), "Young night thought", appears in A Child's Garden of Verses, first published 1885 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Ethel Crowningshield , "Young night thought", published 1910 [ voice and piano ], from Robert Louis Stevenson Songs [sung text not yet checked]
• by Edward Falk , "Young night thought", published <<1940 [ voice and piano ], from A Child's Garden of Verses [sung text not yet checked]
• by Arthur Foote (1853 - 1937), "Young night thought", published 1897 [ voice and piano ], from The Stevenson Song-Book [sung text not yet checked]
• by Joseph Groocock , "All night long and every night", published 1957 [ SSA chorus and piano ], from A Child's Garden [sung text not yet checked]
• by Henry Kimball Hadley (1871 - 1937), "Young night thought", op. 29 no. 3, published 1903 [ voice and piano ], from Four Stevenson Songs, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Sidney Homer (1864 - 1953), "Young night thought", op. 16 (Three songs from "A Child's Garden of Verses") no. 2 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by (Gerald) Graham Peel (1878 - 1937), "Young night thought", published 1910 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Marvin Radnor , "Young night thought", published 1923 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Frederic Rzewski (1938 - 2021), "Night Thought", 1999 [ voice and piano ], from The Road: a novel for solo piano, no. 46, note: the score indicates that the pianist is also the vocalist [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Edith Swepstone (flourished 1887-1915), "The caravan", published 1910 [ voice and piano ], from Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs for Children, no. 5, London : J. Curwen & Sons Ltd. [sung text not yet checked]

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2007-06-14
Line count: 16
Word count: 105