When that I was and a little tiny boy (Twelfth Night)
William Shakespeare
Teacher card
- Published
- 1623, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
- Length
- 20 lines, 148 words, 1 word in 148 is long
- Year band
- Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
- Themes
- rain, wind
- Time
- 5–10 min, depending on the activity
The text
When that I was and a little tiny boy,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,A foolish thing was but a toy,For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man’s estate,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came, alas, to wive,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,By swaggering could I never thrive,For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came unto my beds,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,With toss-pots still had drunken heads,For the rain it raineth every day.
A great while ago the world begun,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,But that’s all one, our play is done,And we’ll strive to please you every day.
William Shakespeare (died 1616), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1623), lines 176559–176582 of Project Gutenberg ebook #100. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.
What to do with it
- Its lines are dealt for the sky in the weather poemsin weatherline · 20 lines · about 5–10 min
See where weatherline takes lines from this poem, then read today's poem the sky has chosen.
weatherline.popplepoetry.com/sources#sx-rain
Send the whole hand-out
https://popplepoetry.com/find/shakespeare-when-that-i-was-and-a-little-tiny-boy · popplepoetry.com