✦ A Classic Poem ✦
Halfway down the stairs is a stair where a child always stops. It isn’t up and it isn’t down, so it isn’t really anywhere. It’s somewhere else instead.
Read aloud by Storyland Classics ✦ 1 min 14 sec ✦ Watch on YouTube
✦ The Poem ✦
by A. A. Milne, from When We Were Very Young (1924). Public domain in the United States.
Halfway down the stairs Is a stair Where I sit. There isn’t any Other stair Quite like It. I’m not at the bottom, I’m not at the top; So this is the stair Where I always Stop.
Halfway up the stairs Isn’t up, And isn’t down. It isn’t in the nursery, It isn’t in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts Run round my head: “It isn’t really Anywhere! It’s somewhere else Instead!”
✦ About the Poem ✦
A. A. Milne (1882–1956) wrote When We Were Very Young in 1924 for his son, Christopher Robin, two years before Winnie-the-Pooh. The book was an instant success, and its poems, illustrated by E. H. Shepard, are still read aloud in nurseries a hundred years later.
Many children have a secret thinking spot, and Milne found one on the stairs. The short, stepping lines look like a staircase on the page, and the poem’s idea, a place that is neither here nor there, has charmed grown-ups as much as children. It was famously set to music and sung by Kermit the Frog’s nephew Robin on The Muppet Show.
✦ Talk About It ✦