EARLY RISING.
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew-bespangling herb and tree;
Each flower has wept and bowed towards th’ east
Above an hour since, yet you are not drest;
Nay, not so much as out of bed,
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns.—Herrick.
“Up with the sun” implies, in common parlance, very early habits, of difficult attainment. But, “we rise with the sun at Christmas: it were but continuing to do so till the middle of April, and without any perceptible change we should find ourselves then rising at five o’clock; at which hour we might continue till September, and then accommodate ourselves again to the change of season, regulating always the time of retiring in the same proportion. They who require eight hours sleep would, upon such a system, go to bed at nine during four months.”