This week’s poem is by Robert Louis Stevenson, and it is “Winter-Time”, which seems appropriate.
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Poem 416. Winter-Time
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.
When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.
Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding cake.
This is from A Child’s Garden of Verses, Stevenson’s 1885 collection of poems written for younger readers.
The first stanza captures the winter sun so wonderfully—the lateness of dawn and the earliness of dusk and the contrast between the brightness of the winter sun and the weakness of its rays, also emphasising those wonderful sunsets where our sun glows like a blood orange and sets the evening sky alight.
The next stanza reminds us of the chilliness of a winter morning, rising while the stars are still shining, washing and dressing in the darkness and shivering with the cold; the third is less relatable nowadays but we can imagine sitting by a roaring fire (or hot radiator) to keep warm, or driving out to take in the winter scenery though perhaps not in a sleigh pulled by raindeer!
When we do go out, we wrap up warmly—these days at the behest of common sense rather than the injunctions of a nanny–only common sense when the cold bites and the air freezes in our noses.
Our footsteps stands out in the snow and frost, the darkness of the underlying ground standing out where all else seems silvery, and the air turns steamy as we breathe out. Stevenson’s description of the snowy surroundings as frosted like a wedding cake—or perhaps a Christmas cake!
I like it because it is so good at conjuring those images of a wintry landscape and the sensations a child might feel when winter comes.
There are several performances of this poem on YouTube but I have chosen a musical version on the ChubbyAI channel.