Spring Poem

I heard this poem on a Celtic music CD my wife picked up at the Wheaton Public Library. My kids love it. Sierra (the oldest) goes around humming/doo-dooing the famous Scottish pipe and drum marching song “Scotland the Brave“. That song gives me chills. I’ve told my wife that when I die I want her to have that song and Amazing Grace played by a pipe and drum group and then throw my ashes off a bluff in Scotland. Anyway….I digress…

The CD is by Bonnie Rideout and is called “Gi’me Elbow Room”. You can hear the whole CD over on Rhapsody.

The poem itself speaks volumes of my hope for spring…

Robert Louis Stevenson
My Kingdom

Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head.
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom where coming out,
Some yellow and some red.

I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small.
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.

And all about was mine, I said,
The little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.

I played there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me.
At last I heard my mother call
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.

And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms.
Alas! and as my home I neared,
How very big my nurse appeared,
How great and cool the rooms!