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✦ A Classic Poem ✦

Vespers

A poem by A. A. Milne, from When We Were Very Young, 1924

Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed. Christopher Robin is saying his prayers, but his thoughts keep wandering to bath time and Nanny’s blue dressing-gown.

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✦ The Poem ✦

Vespers

by A. A. Milne, from When We Were Very Young (1924). Public domain in the United States.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed, Droops on the little hands little gold head. Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy. I know that’s right. Wasn’t it fun in the bath to-night? The cold’s so cold, and the hot’s so hot. Oh! God bless Daddy—I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more, I can see Nanny’s dressing-gown on the door. It’s a beautiful blue, but it hasn’t a hood. Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.

Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed, And pull the hood right over my head, And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small, And nobody knows that I’m there at all.

Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day. And what was the other I had to say? I said “Bless Daddy,” so what can it be? Oh! Now I remember it. God bless Me.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed, Droops on the little hands little gold head. Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

✦ About the Poem ✦

A Wandering Bedtime Prayer

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.

Vespers is an old word for evening prayers. What makes the poem so true is how the child’s mind drifts while praying, to the bath, to Nanny’s dressing-gown, to hiding under a hood. A tiny copy of the poem was placed in the library of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, and it became one of Milne’s most famous verses.

✦ Talk About It ✦

Questions to Share

  • What does Christopher Robin see when he opens his fingers?
  • What does he almost forget to say at the end?
  • What do you think about at bedtime as you fall asleep?

✦ Keep Reading ✦

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