potw: bed in summer

May 23, 2011

In honor of the longer days that are oh, so lovely, we are memorizing this poem this week. Our children have been sleeping outside a lot this past week and then they wake up to the sounds of the birds in our trees…and I wake up to the sound of my children giggling in a pile outside my window.

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson (Keziah’s current favorite author)

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?

Luckily for our children, they go to bed pretty late so they have time to spend with their papa in the evenings…but I remember putting them to bed in the daylight and how cross they would be at going to bed before the sun.