The poem "My Bed is a Boat" by Robert Louis Stevenson is a four-lined four-stanza poem that describes the very childlike scene for a child to sleep. Describing his bed as a boat, he fantasizes that sleeping is like sailing on a journey, which is a rather exciting way for a child to view sleep.
This children poetry simplifies the theme of sleeping and captures the childish nature of how sleep can be imagined as. The narrator of the poem is a small child who looks forward to sailing. He begins the poem by saying that "My bed is like a little boat; Nurse helps me in when I embark; She girds me in my sailor's coat And starts me in the dark." This childhood imagination of the very act of sleeping makes it more fun and exciting unlike the ordinary way of putting a child to bed. The second stanza reads "At night I go on board and say Good-night to all my friends on shore" which might be suggestive of the child bidding goodnight to those who are still awake. Children go to sleep before the adults so, the child narrator may have been talking about the adults who are still awake when he had to go to sleep.
