Bed in Summer

Robert Louis Stevenson

Teacher card

Published: 1885, in A Child's Garden of Verses
Length: 45 lines, 236 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, sun
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

In winter I get up at nightAnd dress by yellow candle-light.

FOREIGN LANDS

I held the trunk with both my handsAnd looked abroad on foreign lands.

THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE

I was the giant great and stillThat sits upon the pillow-hill,

MY SHADOW

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

FOREIGN CHILDREN

Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,Little frosty Eskimo,Little Turk or Japanee,Oh! don't you wish that you were me?

LOOKING-GLASS RIVER

We can see our coloured facesFloating on the shaken pool

THE HAYLOFT

Oh, what a joy to clamber there,Oh, what a place for play,With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,The happy hills of hay!

NORTH-WEST PASSAGE

And face with an undaunted treadThe long black passage up to bed.

PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER

Water now is turned to stoneNurse and I can walk upon;Still we find the flowing brooksIn the picture story-books.

THE LITTLE LAND

I have just to shut my eyesTo go sailing through the skies—To go sailing far awayTo the pleasant Land of Play;

THE FLOWERS

All the names I know from nurse:Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,And the Lady Hollyhock.

TO AUNTIE

What did the other children do?And what were childhood, wanting you?

Robert Louis Stevenson (died 1894), A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), lines 291–357 of Project Gutenberg ebook #25609. 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 · 45 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#rl-bed

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/stevenson-bed-in-summer · popplepoetry.com