Four brisk lines in which a yellow-billed bird lands on the windowsill and scolds a "sleepy-head" for still being in bed. Short enough to say from memory, it makes a cheerful morning counterpart to Stevenson's bedtime poems, best read at the actual moment of waking a child up.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:
"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!"
About this poem
From A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this, one of the shortest poems in A Child's Garden of Verses, published in 1885. He put the book together while often ill in bed, and dedicated it to Alison Cunningham, the nurse who had looked after him as a sickly boy in Edinburgh. Most of the collection is childhood remembered by a grown man. This one is a cheeky bird calling out a child who will not get up.
Use it first thing in the morning. Do the bird's voice on the last line, sing-song and teasing. It works well for a child who dawdles at getting-up time. Point at the window, or hop two fingers along the sill like the birdie, then a light poke to finish.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition