Bed in Summer

Perhaps the best way to follow-up on the reflective thoughts in the post yesterday on the waning days of summer, is this simple beauty from Robert Louis Stevenson titled "Bed in Summer"

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?

Well, kids no longer will be complaining that they have to get to the bed--it gets pretty dark even by kids' sleep time.  Now that Labor Day is round the corner, it also means that summer vacation will come to an end for those kids whose school years have yet to begin.  Perhaps their parents have been prepping them up the last few days on a school day schedule of waking up at a certain time, and going to bed by a certain hour.

To everything, turn, turn, turn ...

Poem(s) of the day

First, Robert Louis Stevenson's Requiem:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This is the verse you grave for me:
'Here he lies where he longed to be;
Here is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.'

Notice "this is the verse" there? 
Philip Larkin titled his poem This be the verse ... It is a short one, with swift blows. 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.