If you’re looking to start reading poetry regularly in your family, Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses is an excellent place to begin. You may be surprised at how some of the poems are already familiar to you! The following poem is one of our favorites from the collection, and it comes first in the book.
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?
Perhaps your family has spent some time talking about that cruel reality of childhood summers: going to bed while the sun is still up. Kids, maybe if you read this in a very sad voice to your parents, they’ll let you stay up tonight!
Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, writing, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. They live in Charlotte, North Carolina, with their five kids, who are in various stages of leaving the nest.
She invites you to subscribe to her newsletter, On the Common, or to follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
She invites you to subscribe to her newsletter, On the Common, or to follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
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Just the other day I pulled our copy of this off my bookshelves that currently live in my in-laws basement. I was thinking I should take it to Guadalajara with us for this coming year. Now I know I will!