And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect daysJames Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
The cowslip startles in meadows green, the buttercup catches the sun in its chaliceJames Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal. A chalice is a cup.
How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, in the broad and fiery street, in the narrow lane, how beautiful is the rain!Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rain in Summer.
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.Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day.Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day!Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
Show all 47 quotes (41 more)
Heat and Long Days, continued
Oh, summer has clothed the earth in a cloak from the loom of the sun! And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue, and a belt where the rivers run.Paul Laurence Dunbar, In Summer. A mantle is a cloak.
Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life.Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperateWilliam Shakespeare, Sonnet 18. Temperate means mild.
The summer nights are short where northern days are long: for hours and hours lark after lark trills out his song.Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song.
Though closer still the blinds we pull to keep the shady parlour cool, yet he will find a chink or two to slip his golden fingers through.Robert Louis Stevenson, Summer Sun, in A Child's Garden of Verses. He is the sun.
Whether we look, or whether we listen, we hear life murmur, or see it glistenJames Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal.
Winter is cold-hearted, spring is yea and nay, autumn is a weathercock blown every way: summer days for me when every leaf is on its treeChristina Rossetti, Summer.
The Sea and the Shore 12
A boat beneath a sunny sky, lingering onward dreamily in an evening of JulyLewis Carroll, the closing poem of Through the Looking-Glass.
A wet sheet and a flowing sea, a wind that follows fast, and fills the white and rustling sail, and bends the gallant mastAllan Cunningham, A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea. On a ship a sheet is a rope that adjusts a sail.
Across the narrow beach we flit, one little sandpiper and I, and fast I gather, bit by bit, the scattered driftwood bleached and dry.Celia Thaxter, The Sandpiper.
Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me as I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, all my dreams, come back to me.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea.
Boats sail on the rivers, and ships sail on the seas; but clouds that sail across the sky are prettier far than these.Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song.
Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along for ever, with trees on either hand.Robert Louis Stevenson, Where Go the Boats?, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
The horses of the sea rear a foaming crest, but the horses of the land serve us the best.Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song. The horses of the sea are waves.
I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea! I am where I would ever be; with the blue above, and the blue below, and silence wheresoe'er I goBryan Waller Procter, The Sea. Wheresoe'er is wherever.
My holes were empty like a cup. In every hole the sea came up, till it could come no more.Robert Louis Stevenson, At the Sea-Side, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!Bryan Waller Procter, The Sea.
When I was down beside the sea a wooden spade they gave to me to dig the sandy shore.Robert Louis Stevenson, At the Sea-Side, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
The wild waves reach their hands for it, the wild wind raves, the tide runs high, as up and down the beach we flit,—one little sandpiper and I.Celia Thaxter, The Sandpiper.
Gardens and Bees 12
The bee is not afraid of me, I know the butterfly; the pretty people in the woods receive me cordially.Emily Dickinson, Poems. Cordially means warmly.
Brown and furry caterpillar in a hurry, take your walk to the shady leaf, or stalkChristina Rossetti, Sing-Song.
Burly, dozing humble-bee, where thou art is clime for me.Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Humble-Bee. A humble-bee is a bumblebee; clime means climate.
The grass so little has to do,—a sphere of simple green, with only butterflies to brood, and bees to entertainEmily Dickinson, The Grass.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet growsWilliam Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Blows means blooms.
Insect lover of the sun, joy of thy dominion! Sailor of the atmosphere; swimmer through the waves of airRalph Waldo Emerson, The Humble-Bee.
The lily has an air, and the snowdrop a grace, and the sweetpea a way, and the heartsease a face,—yet there's nothing like the rose when she blows.Christina Rossetti, Sing-Song. Blows means blooms.
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—one clover, and a bee, and revery. The revery alone will do if bees are few.Emily Dickinson, Poems. Revery is daydreaming.
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, and hide in cooling trees, a voice will run from hedge to hedge about the new-mown meadJohn Keats, On the Grasshopper and Cricket. The voice is the grasshopper; a mead is a meadow.
When the cows come home the milk is coming, honey's made while the bees are hummingChristina Rossetti, Sing-Song.
When the meadows laugh with lively green, and the grasshopper laughs in the merry sceneWilliam Blake, Laughing Song, in Songs of Innocence.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I: in a cowslip's bell I lie; there I couch when owls do cry.William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Ariel's song; to couch is to lie down.
Vacation and Play 10
Blessings on thee, little man, barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, and thy merry whistled tunesJohn Greenleaf Whittier, The Barefoot Boy. Pantaloons are trousers.
The first of June! The Kings are off to the seashore tomorrow, and I'm free. Three months' vacation—how I shall enjoy it!Louisa May Alcott, Little Women. Meg teaches the King children.
Oh, what a joy to clamber there, oh, what a place for play, with the sweet, the dim, the dusty air, the happy hills of hay!Robert Louis Stevenson, The Hayloft, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
Through all the pleasant meadow-side the grass grew shoulder-high, till the shining scythes went far and wide and cut it down to dry.Robert Louis Stevenson, The Hayloft, in A Child's Garden of Verses. A scythe is a long curved blade for cutting grass.
Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning to hang a little heavily on his hands.Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Coveted means longed for.
Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me and turn his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat, come hither, come hither, come hither!William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Hither means here.
Up in the air and over the wall, till I can see so wide, rivers and trees and cattle and all over the countrysideRobert Louis Stevenson, The Swing, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
Up into the cherry tree who should climb but little me? I held the trunk with both my hands and looked abroad on foreign lands.Robert Louis Stevenson, Foreign Lands, in A Child's Garden of Verses.
Where the mowers mow the cleanest, where the hay lies thick and greenest, there to track the homeward bee, that's the way for Billy and me.James Hogg, A Boy's Song.
Where the pools are bright and deep, where the gray trout lies asleep, up the river and over the lea, that's the way for Billy and me.James Hogg, A Boy's Song. A lea is a meadow.
How this list was compiled: Every line was matched word for word on 2026-09-30 against the Project Gutenberg plain-text edition it comes from (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/N, where N is): 13310 Lowell, Complete Poetical Works; 25609 Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses; 100 Shakespeare, Complete Works; 76703 Rossetti, Sing-Song; 19188 Rossetti, Poems; 1365 Longfellow, Complete Poetical Works; 18338 Dunbar, Complete Poems; 74 Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; 205 Thoreau, Walden; 2621 The Home Book of Verse, volume 3; 12 Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass; 12242 Dickinson, Poems, Three Series; 12843 Emerson, Poems; 1934 Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience; 2619 The Home Book of Verse, volume 1; 514 Alcott, Little Women. Verse is printed as running text with line-opening capitals lowered. Every named author died before 1929; the years were read from the Project Gutenberg catalog pages, the dates The Home Book of Verse prints under each poem, or Wikipedia. The one-line notes are our own. Licence: own work
How it works
Each summer cryptogram hides a line about the season from a poem or a story: long hot days, the sea and the shore, gardens and bees, vacation and play. You get two letters free at the start.
Read the full guide
Four lists of summer lines
Each puzzle is one line from four lists. Heat and Long Days asks what is so rare as a day in June. The Sea and the Shore has a wooden spade, a sandpiper and the horses of the sea. Gardens and Bees has Emily Dickinson's clover and one bee. Vacation and Play has a hayloft, a cherry tree to climb and Tom Sawyer on vacation.
Where to start
One-letter words come first: each is A or I. After that, short words that come back are the way in: one line opens The sea! the sea! the open sea! and another has I'm on the sea! twice. Solve THE SEA once and you hold five letters.
Emerson's humble-bee is a bumblebee. A solved line shows a note like that beside the author's name.
Questions and answers
Can I print a summer cryptogram with its answer?
Yes. Print puzzle prints the coded line over an A to Z tracker grid, with a name and date line on top. The key follows on page two. For the puzzle alone, solve a line, open More options and untick Print the answer key too.
Where do the summer lines come from?
From poems and stories by authors who died before 1929, among them Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott. On 30 September 2026 each one was compared, word for word, with its Project Gutenberg text.
Is a summer cryptogram right for the last week of school?
It fits. Among the lines are Meg in Little Women cheering three months' vacation and Tom Sawyer finding his own a little dull. Each puzzle is a single line.
How do I get a different summer line?
Solve the line, or press Show answer, and New puzzle appears. Each press brings another line from the bank, in a new code in which no letter stands for itself.