It doesn't matter if your summer is busy or full of lazy days, there is always time to squeeze in a poem here and there. Here are 8 poems that you can share with your children while they play legos, at the beach, on a road trip, or with a summer poetry tea time.

What is your favorite summer time poems?

In the Mountains on a Summer Day

Bi Li Bai

Gently I stir a white feather fan,

With open shirt sitting in a green wood.

I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;

A wind from the pine-tress tickles on my bare head

Summer Stars

By Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.

So near you are, sky of summer stars, 

So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 

Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 

So near you are, summer stars, 

So near, strumming, strumming, 

                So lazy and hum-strumming.

Summer Song

By William Carlos Williams

Wanderer moon

smiling a

faintly ironical smile

at this

brilliant, dew-moistened

summer morning,—

a detached

sleepily indifferent

smile, a

wanderer’s smile,—

if I should

buy a shirt

your color and

put on a necktie

sky-blue

where would they carry me?

Bed in Summer

Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night  

And dress by yellow candle-light.  

In summer, quite the other way,  

I have to go to bed by day.  

I have to go to bed and see         

The birds still hopping on the tree,  

Or hear the grown-up people’s feet  

Still going past me in the street.  

And does it not seem hard to you,  

When all the sky is clear and blue,  

And I should like so much to play,  T

o have to go to bed by day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)

By William Sharespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The Swing

By Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,                                   

Up in the air so blue?                               

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing                                   

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,                                   

Till I can see so wide,                               

Rivers and trees and cattle and all                                   

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,                                   

Down on the roof so brown—                               

Up in the air I go flying again,                                   

Up in the air and down!

A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky

By Lewis Carrol

A boat, beneath a sunny sky

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July—

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear—

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—

Lingering in the golden gleam—

Life, what is it but a dream?

Summer in the South

By Paul Laurence Dunbare

 The oriole sings in the greening grove

                                           As if he were half-way waiting,

                                           The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,

                                           Timid and hesitating.

The rain comes down in a torrent sweep

             And the nights smell warm and piney,

The garden thrives, but the tender shoots

             Are yellow-green and tiny.

Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,

             Streams laugh that erst were quiet,

The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue

             And the woods run mad with riot.