POETRY FRIDAY

For the past couple of weeks, as I have watched sleepy children yawning their way through class, I have been thinking about the poem, "Bed in Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I learned that poem when I was a very little girl, from the book, A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES. That book, pictured above, is actually one of the first poetry books I ever owned, was given to me by my Grandma Wilcox, my dad's mom. I think it's where the language of poetry wormed its way into my soul. Here are a few of the poems I remember loving as a little girl.
(I apologize for the weird spacing. Blogspot is being really ugly this morning and I don't have time to redo the whole post).

"Bed in Summertime"

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?

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

   Up in the air so blue? 

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing 

   Ever a child can do! 



Up in the air and over the wall, 

   Till I can see so wide, 

Rivers and trees and cattle and all 

   Over the countryside— 



Till I look down on the garden green, 

   Down on the roof so brown— 

Up in the air I go flying again, 

   Up in the air and down!



Robert Louis Stevenson



"My Shadow"

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.



The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.



He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way

He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!



One morning very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.



Jone McCullough has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Check it Out.