A short, cheerful poem about garden bonfires and the turning seasons, built around the catchy refrain "Sing a song of seasons!" Its brevity and bounce make it one of the easiest in the collection to learn by heart.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
About this poem
Full text confirmed: three stanzas; 'Sing a song of seasons!' begins the third stanza, and the poem actually ends on 'Fires in the fall!'
A short poem built round one autumn sight: bonfire smoke rising over the garden as the summer flowers are cleared away. Its last verse opens with "Sing a song of seasons," the line the poem is best remembered by. Read it outdoors in autumn if you can, with a real bonfire smell somewhere nearby.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition