Robert louis stevenson poems bed in summer

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    A Poem: “Bed in Summer”

    One of the hallmarks of spring for most of the United States is the annual shift to daylight saving time. This time switch also happens to run over the summer, when the daylight hours naturally expand until the summer solstice in June. Many children afflicted with the time switch have moaned to their parents, “Why do I have to go to bed when it’s still daylight? I’m not sleepy!” If you have heard your own children say the same, take heart. It’s not a new complaint. Today’s poem by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850‒1894) echoes the same sentiment of a nineteenth-century child. Share this sweet piece with your own not-so-sleepy children, and see if it makes them smile.

    Bed in Summer

    by Robert Louis Stevenson

     

    In winter I get up at night

    And dress by yellow candlelight

    In summer, quite the other way,

    I have to go to bed by day.

     

    I have to go to bed and see

    The birds still hopping on the tree,

    Or hear the g

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    Today’s text was written as a children’s poem bygd Robert Louis Stevenson. What it notices about the enticing längre days and late sunsets of summer is not limited to children however. I suspect many adults too find it harder to wind down when it’s still light and pleasant out.

    They say I’m supposed to go to bed, but there’s birds out there, and where’s my phone or my Nintendo?

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    Stevenson published this in 1885 when some things of the earlier 19th century were wearing out. The voice of the child in the poem says they were used to arising from bed bygd candlelight in winter, and now they are going to bed in the still-daylight of a summer evening. How common was candlelight in a child’s room when this poem was first in print? Gas lighting had given its name to that age, and electric light was soon to become common. The adult Stevenson likely knew of such things, as I read his family business was lighthouse engineering. Perhaps Stevenson was recalli

  • robert louis stevenson poems bed in summer

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    I
    Bed in Summer
    In winter I get up at night
    And dress by yellow candle-light.
    In summer quite the other way,
    I have to go to bed by day.

    I have to go to bed and see
    The birds still hopping on the tree,
    Or hear the grown-up people's feet
    Still going past me in the street.

    And does it not seem hard to you,
    When all the sky is clear and blue,
    And I should like so much to play,
    To have to go to bed by day?

    II
    A Thought

    It is very nice to think
    The world is full of meat and drink,
    With little children saying grace
    In every Christian kind of place.

    III
    At the Sea-side

    When I was down beside the sea
    A wooden spade they gave to me
    To dig the sandy shore.

    My holes were empty like a cup.
    In every hole the sea came up,
    Till it could come no more.

    IV
    Young Night-Thought

    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 empe