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Robert Louis StevensonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In addition to the speaker’s soldiers, ships serve as another vessel of the imagination. Readers can assume that the ships are also “toys” (Line 3) the speaker is animating with their creativity. The speaker “sent their ships in fleets” (Line 9) into the world they are building “[a]ll up and down among the sheets” (Line 10). When one considers a ship, they think of journeys and voyages. They think of sailing to unexplored worlds, to new lands just waiting to be discovered. Ships enable individuals to travel beyond the physical limitations of land, and to take advantage of the freedom traveling by water provides. Water flows and inspires sensations of movement as opposed to static stagnation. In a poem about the freedom provided by the imagination, the ship is symbolic of this freedom and of the imagination itself. The speaker’s imagination is able to carry them to new worlds and on new adventures. Moreover, water is symbolic of the unknown, of depths, and of the collective unconscious. The speaker’s ship, or imagination, floats across the unknown to experience whatever comes up through the imaginative depths.
By Robert Louis Stevenson
At the Sea-Side
Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped
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Markheim
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Requiem
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The Black Arrow
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The Bottle Imp
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The Master of Ballantrae
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson