by William Brighty Rands (1823 - 1882)
The Dream of a Boy who Lived at Nine...
Language: English
Nine grenadiers, with bayonets in their guns; Nine bakers' baskets, with hot-cross buns; Nine brown elephants, standing in a row; Nine new velocipedes, good ones to go; Nine knickerbocker suits, with buttons all complete; Nine pairs of skates with straps for the feet; Nine clever conjurors eating hot coals; Nine sturdy mountaineers leaping on their poles; Nine little drummer-boys beating on their drums; Nine fat aldermen sitting on their thumbs; Nine new knockers to our front door; Nine new neighbours that I never saw before; Nine times running I dreamt it all plain; With bread and cheese for supper I could dream it all again!
Confirmed with Lilliput Levee: Poems of Childhood, Child-Fancy, and Child-Like Moods, London: Alexander Strahan, 1867, page 162. The author's name does not appear anywhere in this book. Note: This poem does not appear in the 1864 edition of Lilliput Levee.
Text Authorship:
- by William Brighty Rands (1823 - 1882), "The Dream of a Boy Who Lived at Nine-Elms", appears in Lilliput Levee, London, Alexander Strahan, first published 1867 [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 György Ligeti (1923 - 2006), "The Dream of a Boy who Lived at Nine Elms", 1988-1993, from Nonsense Madrigals, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 105