Time to Rise

A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window-sill
Cocked his shining eye and said:
“Ain’t you ‘shamed, you sleepy-head!”

Today, November 13, is Robert Louis Stevenson’s birthday. He was born in Scotland in 1850, a generation that seems so very remote in 2026, but his classic book, A Child’s Garden of Verses, gives us glimpses of what it was like for children living in those times – a time before telephones and computers, even electric lights in people’s homes. Reading these verses offers a healthy challenge to understand life in an earlier time, even for adults. Then they can be shared a little at a time with children as we explain who “nursie” is along with other things in the poet’s child-imagination.

“My Shadow” is another favorite poem of mine by Robert Louis Stevenson:

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 gets 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 says 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!

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.

In addition to his many poems for children, Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote several classic novels including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

While re-reading A Child’s Garden of Verses, I was reminded of another poet from the same time period, James Whitcomb Riley. He was known as the Hoosier Poet, and having grown up in Indiana myself, I have happy memories of my mother reading two of his poems to my siblings and me when we were young. These poems were “The Raggedy Man” and “Little Orphant Annie.” James Whitcomb Riley published a collection of his poems in a book called Rhymes of Childhood.

There are many wonderful books of poetry on the market today including some written by the authors who write on this blog. Check them out as well by looking under the “Our Books” link on this website.

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