Summer

Christina Rossetti

Teacher card

Published: 1866, in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems
Length: 26 lines, 125 words, 1 word in 18 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: summer
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

Winter is cold-heartedSpring is yea and nay,Autumn is a weather-cockBlown every way:Summer days for meWhen every leaf is on its tree;

When Robin's not a beggar,And Jenny Wren's a bride,And larks hang singing, singing, singing,Over the wheat-fields wide,And anchored lilies ride,And the pendulum spiderSwings from side to side,

And blue-black beetles transact business,And gnats fly in a host,And furry caterpillars hastenThat no time be lost,And moths grow fat and thrive,And ladybirds arrive.

Before green apples blush,Before green nuts embrown,Why, one day in the countryIs worth a month in town;Is worth a day and a yearOf the dusty, musty, lag-last fashionThat days drone elsewhere.

Christina Rossetti (died 1894), Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems (1866), lines 5651–5679 of Project Gutenberg ebook #16950. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 26 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#ro-summer

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/rossetti-summer · popplepoetry.com