Poetry Friday: Summer Sun

The August sun will climb high in the sky today, and the temperature will rise right along with  it - all the way to 95 degrees! New England might be known for its cold snowy winters, but our summers are no less dramatic!

Before I share our poem, I'd like to kick off a solar theme this week with a link to a video clip of my brother-in-law, a Nasa solar physicist, speaking with a Baltimore news program yesterday about the science of the sun. My boys enjoyed watching it, and thought their Uncle Alex did a great job! Earlybird kept asking for "the sun one" over and over again. :)

And now, in honor of the blazing heat I can feel building already, here for Poetry Friday is an old favorite by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Summer Sun

Great is the sun, and wide he goes

Through empty heaven without repose;

And in the blue and glowing days

More thick than rain he showers his rays.

*

Though close still the blinds we pull

To keep the shady parlour cool,

Yet he will find a chink or two

To slip his golden fingers through.

*

The dusty attic, spider-clad,

He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;

And through the broken edge of tiles

Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

*

Meantime his golden face around

He bares to all the garden ground,

And sheds a warm and glittering look

Among the ivy’s inmost nook.

*

Above the hills, along the blue,

Round the bright air with footing true,

To please the child, to paint the rose,

The gardener of the World, he goes.

Miss Rumphius has the Round-up this week ...

Taken just now as the sun climbed the eastern sky ...