At the Sea-Side Lyrics
Given a wooden spade down beside the sea, a child digs holes in the sandy shore, and the sea comes up in every one of them. Six lines by Robert Louis Stevenson say what every child who has dug a hole at the beach has seen.
At the Sea-Side
When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/at-the-sea-side/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Tune
- Read slowly and evenly, with a pause before the last line
- Best for ages
- 2 to 7 years
What Does At the Sea-Side Mean?
The poem is two short verses of three lines, and each verse does one job. The first sets the scene: the speaker was down beside the sea, was handed a wooden spade, and set about digging "the sandy shore". The second reports the result. The holes were "empty like a cup", but the sea came up in every hole "till it could come no more".
The comparison to a cup is the heart of it. A cup is empty until something fills it, and each hole is a cup in the sand waiting for the sea. The last line says the water kept rising until it could rise no further, which is the way water on a beach behaves: dig near the edge of the sea, and the hole fills.
Nothing in the poem is difficult. The only older detail is that the spade is wooden, where a modern beach spade is usually plastic. The sounds are tidy: sea and me rhyme, cup and up rhyme, and the last lines of the two verses, shore and more, rhyme with each other.
Because it is so short, it is easy to learn by heart before a trip to the beach, and it gives a child a line to say while the first hole fills up.
History and Origin
Stevenson's 1885 collection of children's verse holds this poem. At six lines, it is one of the shortest in the book.
Learning Activities
- Dig a hole: at a beach, or in a sandpit with a bucket of water, dig a hole near the wet edge and watch it fill, just as the poem says.
- Cup and hole: pour water into a cup and into a sand hole, and talk about how both get full.
- Wooden spade: compare a wooden spoon or spade with a plastic one: which is lighter, and which digs better?
- Sea sounds: say the last line slowly and let your voice rise, as the water does, then stop at "no more".