Last March, The New York Sun offered “Windy Nights” as its Poem of the Day, and perhaps it’s time to revisit Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), this time for a winter poem. His collection, “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” appeared in 1885, and it quickly became the most widely read and influential volume of children’s poetry ever written (leaving aside “Mother Goose”). He was the bridge between two worlds: the comic nonsense and sentimental poetry of the mid-Victorians, and the sardonic and clever children’s verse of the Edwardians. Despite that role, however, he seems to have faded. Who still gives copies of “A Child’s Garden of Verses” to nieces and nephews for Christmas? Who still recites “The world is so full of a number of things, / I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”? Not enough of us. In “Winter-Time,” Stevenson deploys his beloved tetrameter couplets to present the child’s sense of winter.Winter-Timeby Robert Louis StevensonLate 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 blowsIts 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.___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
