Poetry 105: Bed in Summer

I am not too familiar with the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. I have only read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I did not like the novella too much. So imagine my surprise when I learned that he wrote poems! And not just only poems, but poems about summer. I guess it was my ignorance that rationalized that Stevenson only wrote sci-fi/mystery novellas.


A poem about summer is perfectly appropriate since it is indeed summer and we are on our summer vacation. And how do people usually describe summer? As going by too fast.

"Bed in Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson

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?

How else do people usually describe summer? As the months of possibility.

"St. Martin's Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson

AS swallows turning backward
When half-way o'er the sea,
At one word's trumpet summons
They came again to me -
The hopes I had forgotten
Came back again to me.

I know not which to credit,
O lady of my heart!
Your eyes that bade me linger,
Your words that bade us part -
I know not which to credit,
My reason or my heart.

But be my hopes rewarded,
Or be they but in vain,
I have dreamed a golden vision,
I have gathered in the grain -
I have dreamed a golden vision,
I have not lived in vain.

What are your favorite summer themed poems?