A child's own account of a winter morning: dressing shivering by candlelight, warming frozen bones by the fire, then bundled up outside where the cold wind blows "frosty pepper" up the nose. The sensory detail, from the blood-red sunset to the silver-frosted garden, gives a parent plenty to act out with shivers and sniffs. Stevenson wrote it for A Child's Garden of Verses, meant to be read in a child's own voice rather than at one.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
Late 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 blows
Its 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.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition