Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The birds still playing in the clouds











After I finish work, I have a little bit free time in the evening before I fall asleep. The daylight hours keep increasing. It's after 8 o'clock and still the sun is high in the sky even though summer is still a ways away, which reminds me of this poem that was read to me in my early childhood:



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?

Source: A Child's Garden of Verses

(click on the photo to see the swallows playing in the clouds to the east)

7 comments:

Dale said...

(o)

robin andrea said...

I have a theory about how we set our personal clocks by the latitude in which we grew up. I found the duration of sunlight at 48 degrees north in the summer to be overwhelming, and the lack of it in winter to be utterly depressing. I set my personal seasonal clock at 40 degrees north. I have wondered what life would be like close to the equator. Weirdly satisfying, or just plain weird!

The Solitary Walker said...

Yes, praise to the coming summer, am. Many long, wonderful, daylight months yet until Stevenson's 'lamplighter... comes posting up the street'!

Dawn said...

love that photo Am! and loveing the sun today!

Anonymous said...

ah the light back in the north country. good to see, and the swallows, better than first snow.
kjm

bev said...

Just catching up on blog reading once again - it seems I'm never entirely caught up with anything these days! I had not thought of how it is to go to bed while it's still light in many years. Thanks for the reminder. No I recall how strange it seemed to see he sun and blue skies through the window as I lay in bed. How wonderful it was to go to our summer cottage and be able to stay up late i the evening to have a bonfire and roast potatoes in foil and marshmallows on the twig of a green ash. I hope your work is going well and that it leaves you with enough time for rest and relaxation. Take care, bev

am said...

robin andrea -- My personal seasonal clock is set to 40 degrees north, too. The duration of sunlight in the summer at 48 degrees north still feels unsettling to me, although I do fine with the short hours of light in the winter.

Solitary Walker -- I like the warmth of summer more than the extra light (-:

Dawn -- Thank you! It's been beautiful this past week, hasn't it?

kjm -- I'm not much for snow but I love when the first leaves begin to turn even more than I love the swallows.

bev -- The summer days will be long in Nova Scotia and give you lots of daylight to work on your new home! Thinking about what robin andrea said about latitudes, Nova Scotia appears to be south of where I am in Washington state, but probably has about the same balance of day and night.