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Lyric Poem · For Kids

Summer Sun

by Robert Louis Stevenson

1Great is the sun, and wide he goes

2Through empty heaven with repose;

3And in the blue and glowing days

4More thick than rain he showers his rays.

5Though closer still the blinds we pull

6To keep the shady parlour cool,

7Yet he will find a chink or two

8To slip his golden fingers through.

9The dusty attic spider-clad

10He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;

11And through the broken edge of tiles

12Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

13Meantime his golden face around

14He bares to all the garden ground,

15And sheds a warm and glittering look

16Among the ivy's inmost nook.

17Above the hills, along the blue,

18Round the bright air with footing true,

19To please the child, to paint the rose,

20The gardener of the World, he goes.

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Quick facts

Poem
Summer Sun
Poet
Robert Louis Stevenson
Length
20 lines
Form
Lyric Poem
Themes
For Kids, Nature, Summer, Childhood

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
20 lines · 5 quatrains
Line length
Consistent with long metre. Four eight-syllable lines (8.8.8.8), the hymn stanza's longer cousin.
The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake

Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894
Source record
PoetryDBSummer Sun by robert-louis-stevenson, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 6ed1caa129124955
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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