Bed in Summer
Lyrics
In winter I get up at nightAnd 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 seeThe birds still hopping on the tree,Or hear the grown-up people's feetStill 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?
History and Meaning
The poem opens A Child's Garden of Verses, and it opens it with a grievance. Stevenson picks the one injustice every small child recognises immediately: in summer the sun is still shining, other people are still outside, and bedtime arrives anyway.
Origins
Stevenson published A Child's Garden of Verses in 1885. He was 34, often seriously ill, and had spent much of his own childhood in bed in Edinburgh being read to by his nurse Alison Cunningham, to whom the book is dedicated. The collection recalls childhood from a sickroom, which is part of why so many of its poems are about looking out of windows and inventing things to do indoors.
Edinburgh's latitude sharpens the poem. Scottish summer evenings stay light very late, and winter mornings stay dark long after waking time, so the seasonal flip Stevenson describes is more extreme there than in most of England.
Meaning & Interpretation
The structure is a simple reversal held for twelve lines. Winter means getting up in the dark by candle-light; summer means going to bed in daylight. The child notices the symmetry and finds it unfair in both directions.
The last verse changes who the poem is talking to. For eight lines the child describes the situation, then turns and asks the reader directly whether it does not seem hard. Stevenson lets the child argue the case rather than having an adult explain it, which is the technique running through the whole book.
Why did children go to bed while it was still light?
Bedtimes were set by the clock and by household routine, not by sunset, and in Scotland midsummer daylight can last past ten at night. Stevenson is describing an ordinary Victorian nursery schedule colliding with northern summer light.
What does "dress by yellow candle-light" tell us about the period?
It dates the poem to a house lit by candles rather than electricity. In a Scottish winter, sunrise can come well after eight in the morning, so a child getting up for the day would genuinely be dressing in the dark by candle.
Who was A Child's Garden of Verses written for?
Stevenson wrote the collection about childhood generally, but dedicated it to Alison Cunningham, the nurse who cared for him through a sickly childhood in Edinburgh. Many of the poems draw on the games and daydreams he invented while confined to bed.
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