CHAPTER I

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LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN

BY

ORTON LOWE

ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF THE ALLEGHENY COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA, PUBLIC

SCHOOLS

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1922

_All rights reserved_

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1914,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1914.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

THIS book is about books of literature. Its excuse for being at all is

in the over-reading of books that are not literature. Confusion and

hurry confront both child and teacher in the land of books. The hope is

held that something can be done to lead the child out of this confusion.

There is no greater possibility existing in the child's educational life

than the possibility of self-cultivation in the reading of great books.

Nor has there ever been a greater need for the quiet reading of such

books than in a time of wonderful mechanical invention. Shall a boy fly

or shall he read? It seems both fair and possible to say that he may fly

but he must read. Whatever be the line of work he chooses to follow, he

will have spare hours. His contribution to the life of his community and

the rounding out of his individual life are dependent very largely on

the wise use of these spare hours. Some spare hours may be given to

music or the theatre, some to social entertainment, some to outdoor

sports, some to church aid work; but some must surely be given to the

reading of great books.

The following pages attempt to set the boy on the right trail, so that

when he reaches man's estate he will of his own accord devote a just

portion of his spare hours to books of literature. To do this, attention

needs to be given to these practices: the learning of a little choice

poetry by heart, the learning of a few fairy stories and myths through

the ear, the reading and rereading of a few great books, the saving of

money to build up a small but well-selected private bookshelf, the

practice of reading aloud by the fireside or in the schoolroom. The

chances are that a boy so directed will find reading a pleasure and will

turn to what is really worth while. The attempt by parents and teachers

to bring about an abiding love for books of power is a most commendable

attempt; and, if successful, the best contribution to a refined private

life. To all such attempts these pages aim to contribute.

The preparation of these pages has been made easier and surer by the

generous aid of Mr. Fred L. Homer, of the Central High School of

Pittsburgh, and Mr. Homer L. Clark, a business man of Cleveland, in

reading a greater portion of the manuscript; by Miss Emily Beal, of the

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, in information on illustrated editions

of children's books; and by Mr. Ernest C. Noyes, of the Peabody High

School of Pittsburgh, in reading the proof.

For kind permission to use copyright material the author thanks Mr.

Rudyard Kipling and Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company for

"Recessional"; Professor Richard G. Moulton for the arrangement of the

selections of Hebrew poetry; Houghton, Mifflin and Company for the

selections from Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, and Whittier; and The

Macmillan Company for the selections from Tennyson, Browning, Arnold,

Clough, and Rossetti.

ORTON LOWE.

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA,

May, 1914.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE v

PART I. INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

I. THE VALUE OF GOOD BOOKS 3

II. BOOKS AND LITERATURE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 11

III. THE LEARNING OF LYRIC POETRY BY HEART 18

PART II. SELECTIONS FOR MEMORIZING

FIRST YEAR 33

SECOND YEAR 44

THIRD YEAR 56

FOURTH YEAR 67

FIFTH YEAR 81

SIXTH YEAR 96

SEVENTH YEAR 115

EIGHTH YEAR 134

PART III. SOURCES OF STANDARD PROSE FOR CHILDREN

I. FAIRY TALES, HOUSEHOLD TALES, AND OTHER FANCIFUL TALES 159

II. CLASSIC MYTHS IN LITERATURE 176

III. BOOKS TO BE OWNED, TO BE READ AND REREAD 188

IV. ON THE PURCHASE AND CARE OF BOOKS 219

V. EDITIONS OF STANDARD BOOKS 232

BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

PART I

INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

THE VALUE OF GOOD BOOKS

"The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when

thou comest bring with thee, and the books, but

especially the parchments."

THE man who believes that education and books are designed for the

imparting only of useful information had better read no farther than

this sentence; for if he does, he will be irritated many a time by what

he regards as ideal and foolish and unworthy of a practical age. But if

he believes life to be something more than meat and the body something

more than raiment, and that he needs his books as well as his cloak

brought into Macedonia, he may with patience and sympathy follow the

guesses herein at the ways and means by which good books may be brought

into the life of a boy. For in the living out of the great story of

securing shelter and food and raiment, the boy who has never felt the

charm of a great book in chimney-corner days, or the man who has never

pored over a "midnight darling" by candlelight, has missed one of the

most refined and harmless pleasures of life. The very books themselves

are refining because they make up the art of literature, an art that is

in its highest sense an expression and interpretation of life. This art

deals with the beautiful. Its appeal is primarily to the feelings. Its

basis is truth whether actual or hoped for. It is this very nature of

literature itself that at the start brings up the question whether the

investment put into it is really worth while. How far has education a

right to develop a sense of the beautiful? What abiding pleasures and

tastes, if any, should the boy of school age seek and cultivate? Just

what equipment for life does a boy need, anyhow?

These are big questions; they are knotty questions. They have never been

settled because they cannot be answered in a way satisfactory to all.

They are rather questions of temperament than of logic. To attempt an

investigation into the claims of literature in a scheme of education,

and to draw from such claims a logical conclusion, is beyond the

ability, knowledge, or inclination of the writer; only personal

impressions will be attempted in the chapters that follow. And besides,

such an investigation, if it could be made, would be so out of fashion

among schoolmasters at the present time that it might bring nothing but

reproach on the one attempting it. The very convenient plan is to assume

a certain educational specific as true and from that assumption to go

straight to a favourable conclusion. In accordance with this fashion it

seems the easiest way to take the privilege of the day and without more

ado assume that books of literature are necessary in the education of a

boy, and conclude therefrom that a principal business of the teacher is

to train the boy to read books intelligently and to form a substantial

taste for them. And why should not a schoolmaster who dotes on a few old

favourites have an unshaken faith in his assumption and go merrily on to

the business of the literature itself and what may be done toward

developing among school children a taste for it?

The late Professor Norton pointed out that a taste for literature is a

result of cultivation more often than a gift of nature. The years of the

elementary school seem to be the time in which cultivation is easiest

and the one in which the taste takes deepest root. Vigorous and tactful

effort will go far to develop pure taste and abiding taste for books.

The present age is more concerned about pure food than about pure

books--maybe an exemplification of John Bright's wish that the

working-men of England eat bacon rather than read Bacon. The bulky,

coarse food of the last century has been displaced by the sealed package

of condensed food done according to a formula, and a mystery to the man

who eats it. So is it in our books. We do not have the frankness and

vulgarity of the eighteenth century; but instead, we have the most

studied forms of insinuation, the harm of which was not approached by

the coarseness of former times. Many a present-day story makes the

ordinary course of life seem uninteresting, a dangerous thing for a book

to do, according to Ruskin. The conduct portrayed has in it too much of

personal freedom arising out of caprice, breaking too much with

traditional right through what a critic once designated as "debauching

innuendo and ill favoured love." The book is often spectacular or sullen

in tone. It may be melodramatic, leaving the reader rebellious or with a

weakened sense of responsibility. Or again, it may be given to

boisterous laughter over situations based on personal misfortune or bad

manners--the way of the comic supplement. And worst of all, it may

become the fashion; that is, a best seller. Its name and some of its

motives will probably get to the children through the talk of the

parents. Then to persuade the reading public that the pure taste for the

healthful story is much more worth while will try the resources of the

teacher. Yet that is exactly what should be expected of him--a Herculean

task and a most thankless one.

To secure a stable as well as a pure taste for things worth while in

books should be an aim of the teacher. He must do this in an age when

the vaudeville idea is deep-rooted. Variety takes the place of sustained

attention. This begets the mood for profligacy. Something new and good

is expected to turn up in the shape of a book. In this mood there is

nothing to inspire to steady purpose. And it seems that the best thing

left for the teacher to do is to "come out strong" on a few good books.

Through fortune and misfortune such books will be permanent possessions

to their reader.

The responsibility for securing this pure and abiding taste rests

primarily with the teacher. He needs to know and to appreciate the good

books which he desires the boy to read. He needs to know the poem or

story at first hand, not criticism about it. If the teacher has real

appreciation for a piece of literature, the boy will discern it in his

face. Then the boy can be put on the right scent and left to trail it

out for himself, as Scott long ago suggested. Time must be taken to do

this: a few good things must be done without fuss or hurry. It is

foolish to have a taste surfeited as soon as cultivated. Here is truly a

place to be temperate as well as enthusiastic.

A teacher should be able to read aloud from a book with good effect. The

voice can bring out the finer touches that are likely to be missed by

the eye. No explanation in reading is so good as is adequate vocal

expression. In fact, as a rule, the less explaining the better. If there

is a single thing that for the last dozen years has stood in the way of

boys' and girls' appreciating good literature, it is the so-called

laboratory method. Of all the quack educational specifics that have

been advanced, the laboratory method, with a poem or an imaginative

story, has been the most presumptuous and absurd. Who cares to treat

fancies and fairies according to formulae? One might as well apply the

laboratory method to his faith and his hopes in his religion.

In this struggle to bring good books into the life of the boy, many

opposing forces must be met with tact and with patience. Censorship of

books, like inspection of foods, may be highly desirable; but by no

means is it efficacious. The worthless book will continue to obtrude

itself at all times and on all occasions. Then there are the reading

habits of the community, the notions of parents about what the child

should read, and the child's own natural or acquired tastes,--these must

all be reckoned with. Here are a few of the opposing forces to be

encountered in every community:

The juvenile series--the hardest problem to handle from the book side of

the question. The series is always "awful long," all of the volumes are

cut to the same pattern, they are always in evidence, and they are all

equally stupid. The themes range from boarding school proprieties to

criminal adventure; and they are all equally false to the facts of real

life or the longings for true romance. What shall be done with them?

The ease of access of the child to the daily paper with headlines

inviting attention to the doings of police courts and clinics.

The eagerness with which children read the comic supplement and even ask

at the public library if books of that class of humour cannot be had.

The low-grade selection that is many times given the child by the school

reader as subject-matter from which to learn the great art of reading.

The prejudice of parents and even of communities against fairy tales and

all forms of highly imaginative literature--the hardest thing to meet

from the reading side of the question. Librarians are requested not to

give fairy books to children. Such books are thought to be bad. The

demand is for true books. Parents have not discovered the existence of

the imagination and the part it has played in the intellectual,

artistic, and spiritual progress of man. But must school teachers not

first recognize the truth of this last statement before parents are

expected to do so?

The impression that books of information are real literature and that

they ought to be sufficient subject-matter for any child's reading.

The belief that books should teach facts and point morals rather than

entertain and refine and inspire.

The early acquired taste of boys and girls for stories of everyday life;

boys turning to the athletic story and girls to the school story.

Excessive reading and reading done at the suggestion of a chum.

Lack of ownership of books and of the rereading of great books.

The passing of the practice of reading aloud about the fireside.

The teacher will surely need to summon his judgment, courage, and

perseverance if he is to succeed measurably in the effort for good

reading. Let him not forget that his most enduring work will not be

seeking to cut off from the child the book that is not good, nor yet

convincing the parents that this or that book is good or bad; but it

will be getting the interest and confidence of the child himself. When

the teacher comes to consider that a boy naturally loves a hero, and

like Tom Sawyer longs to "die temporarily," or that a girl is naturally

curious to open the forbidden door of the closet as was Fatima, he

cannot but see that this is good ground where the right seed will spring

up many fold. Here then is the place for the teacher to sow with care.

For him, the pages that follow are designed as something of a guide in

the field of children's books, if, whilst working as a husbandman

therein, by chance he feels the need of a fellow labourer.

CHAPTER II

BOOKS AND LITERATURE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

"He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in

a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath

not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished;

he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller

parts."

--SIR NATHANIEL.

THE place of literature in the primary and grammar grades of schools

needs neither a defence nor an apology. Being a part of that branch

called reading, it is fundamental in the course. The claims set up by

branches other than that of reading and speaking English do not concern

us here. We assume that the first portion of time in a programme is

allotted to this. The object may be dramatic expression in the lower

grades, getting the exact thought from a printed page and reproducing it

in the upper grades, drill in the mechanical details of the language,

such as spelling and pronunciation; or it may be that rare growth of

personality that comes, say, through the skilful reading of poetry

aloud. Without a fair degree of mastery of the elements of reading and

speaking English by the time he completes the grammar grade work, the

boy will enter a secondary school or turn to earning a living,

ill-equipped either to organize and express his own thoughts, or to

find profit and pleasure in gathering the thoughts of another from a

printed page--the greatest accomplishment that a school can give to any

one. It is rather common to hear a high school student say that he

cannot get the story by reading "The Lady of the Lake." This inability

is a positive discredit to what should be normal mental vigour; and such

a student will be found inefficient for the serious business of life or

the refined pleasure of the fireside.

Now it behooves teachers to put on their thinking caps and devise ways

and means that will help students to get the thought from reading, to

tell this thought, and to appreciate the excellencies of good English

books. And they must do this single-handed and alone in the day school,

for but little help can be looked for from the Sunday school, from many

public libraries, and from the home as it is now governed. The child is

turned over to the teacher to train, and in that child lurk two

tendencies of American social life: the hope of getting something for

nothing and the passion for constant variety. And these tendencies are

unchecked by any exercise of that old-time positive authority in the

home, that had much salutary influence on young barbarians. But through

a foolish tolerance, the boy drifts into many habits that do not include

the exemplary ones of sustained attention, industry, thrift, and

self-reliance,--habits that make for efficient life. A royal road to

knowledge is expected, and travel thereon is to be unrestricted by

respect either for age or for authority. His hay must always be sugared.

He becomes a creature of whims, and with this creature the teacher finds

his task in hand. What are the reading habits and tastes that he brings

from his home, and how can the teacher best improve them?

It is clear to even a casual observer that children leave the public

school without the groundwork for a course of reading either for

pleasure or for profit through life. It is also clear that they will get

little help in this line from places other than the public school as

things now obtain. And it is equally clear that the reading habits

formed before the age of fourteen years are the habits and tastes that

last. If then, according to his natural gifts, the student is to be led

to gather the fullest measure from the field of literature, it is the

special duty and privilege of the teacher to direct that gathering. To

this attempt to develop a taste for good literature, some one may raise

the objection that it will not fit all children--and the objection is

well taken. The appeal of literature is not universal. There are a few

persons who find its counterpart in a study and appreciation of the

beauties and wonders of nature. Then again there are many who, instead

of taking themselves to the art of books, find pleasure in perhaps the

greatest of all arts, the art of social intercourse--an art that is

universal enough to reach from vagabondia to the very exclusive set.

However, there is a vast class devoted to a subdued and refined domestic

life, and here it is that good books will bear good fruit many fold.

With this class the teacher must work. What then is to be given to the

children?

Of course it is understood that we are to deal with the enduring

literature of childhood, the literature of power. And it is also to be

understood that reading is to be done in moderation and with care. Then

again it is evident that a certain amount of reading must be prescribed

and thoroughly mastered. Reading must be from what is standard down to

the point of appeal, lest the point always hold the boy to the earth

earthy. After a taste for onions has once been developed, little hope

can be entertained of making the boy a judge of the delicate flavour of

grapes--they will hang high. The teacher must assert a bit of that

healthful positive authority that sets many an urchin on the right path.

A limited choice from books that are classics may be given in good time.

All the chords of life have been struck in great literature, and a fair

knowledge and good judgment can reach almost any disposition, even the

most whimsical.

The thing of first importance to be prescribed is learning classical

poetry by heart until its music has taken a hold on the learner.

Introduce the boy to the varied field of lyric poetry and you have put

before him one of the rarest and most abiding pleasures of life. Here

his troubled heart may always find consolation. Nothing will bring him

to a sense of his own personality with such a deft touch as a perfect

lyric coming to him through his own voice. The next thing to look to is

a right that is a fixed right of childhood and one that it is positively

vicious to suppress, the right to the land of fairy life. A free range

here will be meat and drink to any boy. Much sordidness and much

selfishness in old age come to the man or woman who has not a cultivated

imagination. Logic and cold facts are of precious little value in the

fireside life of a family. The best things of that life are not reasoned

out; but they are felt out and wondered out. Again, the great field of

mythology that is so fundamentally linked to that of literature, and

that is a capital mark of culture, should be open to the boy that he may

roam about and wonder at its mysteries. Then he may as certainly come to

own an "Age of Fable" as he must own a "Golden Treasury." And what a

pair are these!

From these three fields the step will be to a knowledge and

classification of books and their authors, what books to own, and how to

take care of them. And to this working grasp of poetry and stories may

be added a little of what is possible in history, biography, and

personal essay. In this age of cheap and spurious book-making the

reader must know standard editions without abridged and garbled texts.

Even editors of hymn books do not hesitate to mutilate great hymns to

suit their particular notions. This freedom may be a form of that

exaggerated idea of personal privilege that was the gift of democracy in

the past century. A good knowledge of fables and proverbial wisdom will

certainly temper that notion. Such are some of the things that might be

prescribed by the teacher and learned by the student. The field as thus

given is limited, but the friends therein are dear friends. Nor are they

to be exchanged for the new friends that may come through the

advertising appeal, founded on the unsubstantial instinct for constant

variety.

If enough idea of authority can ever be driven into the head of the

American boy to put him into the attitude of a willing learner, good

things may be looked for in habits of reading--provided the teacher be

equal to the responsible task that is laid upon him. The habits of

reading that measure the use of spare time, and in that way the

character of the individual, will work for a more sane and less showy

home life and through that for a community given to other than obtrusive

and frivolous social life. What bundle of habits will serve its slave

better than will this bundle? Or where is keener and more subdued

pleasure to be found? Though books are a bloodless substitute for life,

as Stevenson has well pointed out, we need some substitute in our hours

of ease, and a good book does passing well for such a substitute; and

this is especially true if the book be our favourite from the wonderful

Waverley series and with it we can square about to the fire, snuff the

candle, and let the rest of the world go spin.

CHAPTER III

THE LEARNING OF LYRIC POETRY

"These verses be worthy to keep a room in every

man's memory: they be choicely good."

--From "The Complete Angler."

THE teacher who is a workman skilled in his craft looks upon a few

educational practices as being of intrinsic merit--through and through

in an age of veneer and cheap imitation. Of these practices the one most

fruitful under cultivation, when done with care and in moderation, is

that of learning good poetry by heart. The sense of having truly learned

a thing by heart, of having completely mastered it, is a most pleasant

sense to have. And when the thing learned is one of the many perfect

lyrics from the field of English poetry, a far-sighted judge who has

lived and considered what is of most value to the individual is led to

say: That is well and good. In some mysterious way this possession of a

few choice poems makes for a rarer personality and gives that touch

which can come only through a perfect work of art. By sheer force of

intellect a man may become a cold, designing man of action and set plans

on foot for the time being; but the power that is back of all great

movements for civilization and culture is one that is grounded in

feeling and constructive imagination. The proverbial songs of a nation

are a greater force than are its laws. In one of his most entertaining

essays, De Quincey points out that, when the intellect sets itself up in

opposition to the feelings, one should always trust to the feelings.

Normal instincts are worth more than syllogisms. The man who has attuned

himself to the moods and impulses of lyric poetry is a safe man in

action. Yet he is more than this; he has in him that which is the

groundwork of fireside pleasures and of the joys of companionship. In

other words, he is a man of cultivated imagination, and he can play in

many moods.

Here it may not be amiss to mention the claim of the imagination to

consideration as a faculty of the mind and inquire to what extent it

should be cultivated in our schools; for if its claim be not good, there

is no warrant for using any of the literature of power as subject-matter

for education. Bearing on this question is the following excellent

remark by the late Charles Eliot Norton, who did so very much to raise

the standard of culture in American education: "The imagination is the

supreme intellectual faculty, and it is of all the one that receives

least attention in our common system of education. The reason is not far

to seek. The imagination is of all faculties the most difficult to

control, it is the most elusive of all, the rarest in its full power.

But upon its healthy development depend not only the sound exercise of

the faculties of observation and judgment, but also the command of the

reason, the control of the will, and the growth of the moral sympathies.

The means for its culture which good reading affords is the most

generally available and one of the most efficient." In the same

discussion Professor Norton has this to say of poetry as the highest

expression of the imagination: "Poetry is one of the most efficient

means of education of the moral sentiment, as well as of the

intelligence. It is the source of the best culture. A man may know all

science and yet remain uneducated. But let him truly possess himself of

the work of any one of the great poets, and no matter what else he may

fail to know, he is not without education."

To the evident truth of these quotations the humanist will readily

assent; and so will the true scientist whose earnest and frank devotion

to truth makes it clear to him that nothing great in his field has ever

been done without a constructive imagination. The loss of artistic

imagination through years of painstaking investigation will be a source

of regret to any one devoted to science, as was the loss of the ability

to appreciate the charm of great poetry Darwin's old age regret. The

taste for this great poetry is grounded on healthful and normal

instincts, and it is the part of wisdom to see that this taste be

developed in youth. The boy who has nurtured his youthful imagination

on the magic of great verse will waken up some morning to find himself

among the competent ones of his generation. His life will be bounded by

that restraint which can come only through an inability to solve the

mysteries and wonders that his imagination is constantly conjuring up.

He wants much that he cannot understand and reason out; and the deeper

things of life, things which touch him most vitally as a living

creature, he looks on with reverence. If his imagination is alive to the

experiences of great poetry, he cannot scoff at things felt in the soul

but impossible of explanation. To him there are sacred things in the

fireside life and at the altar that are not to be laid bare by the

curiosity of the reasoner in his search for truth. And when the twilight

of the gods falls about him he is not curious to know, but he trusts and

fears. A song is worth more to him than a proof. On this he is satisfied

to throw himself.

The music of the cathedral organ that Milton could hear daily as a boy

stirred his imagination, and in later years he brought forth verse that

for the grandeur and scope of its imagination has never been excelled.

In a minor but far more human key the songs and balladry of Scotland

awakened in Burns the imagination which has made him the idol of his

native land and loved wherever English poetry is known. Artistic

imagination for the creation or appreciation of poetry is contagious.

What is true of the poet himself is also true of the reader of great

poetry; its wonderful music causes him to feel and live poems that he

has not the gift to write down. It is with this feeling of poems, this

appreciation of the great work of poets, that we have to do. To awaken

feelings a teacher must have an imagination afire with a little verse

that is choicely good, must have at least felt the pure serene a time or

two. This same passion for verse, be it ever so limited, can be handed

over to the boy through a judicious use of the reading voice. That is

the teacher's work in hand.

What kind of verse is to be handed over to the boy, and how much is

there to be of it? To the latter question the only safe answer is this:

not too much. Talents and tastes vary. Every student can be made to get

by rote a certain amount of verse; but as for learning it by heart,

feeling and appreciating its music, that is a different thing. The

greatest and most painstaking of all anthologists of English verse,

Francis Turner Palgrave, claims that there ought to be more than a

glimpse into the Elysian fields of song. In the best collection that has

yet appeared for the teacher or student, "The Children's Treasury of

English Song," Professor Palgrave has this to say in the introduction:

"The treasures here collected are but a few drops from an ocean,

unequalled in wealth and variety by any existing literature. But the

hope is held that it may prove a pleasure and gain to the dear English

and English-speaking children, all the world over,--yet the editor will

hold his work but half fulfilled, unless they are tempted by it to go on

and wander, in whatever direction their fancy may lead them, through the

roads and winding ways of this great and glorious world of English

poetry. He aims only at showing them the path, and giving them a little

foretaste of our treasures.--'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures

new.'" That hope is to be the hope of the teacher; and it needs back of

it the mastering of a few choice lyrics, after which the boy is to be

sent forth to browse alone to his heart's desire.

On the question of the kind of verse to give to the boy, Professor

Palgrave has made the following remark: "The standard of 'suitability to

childhood' must exclude many pieces that have 'merit as poetry':

pictures of life as it seems to middle age--poems coloured by

sentimentalism or morbid melancholy, however attractive to readers no

longer children--love as personal passion or regret (not love as the

groundwork of action)--artificial or highly allusive language--have, as

a rule, been held unfit. The aim has been to shun scenes and sentiments

alien from the temper of average healthy childhood, and hence of greater

intrinsic difficulty than poems containing unusual words." The

limitations of verse for children, as stated in the remark just quoted,

are reasonable and something of a guide to teachers. But they are not

always easy to follow. However, nothing must be given to the child

unless it has real merit as poetry, no matter how it may strike the

fancy at first reading. Nor is any poem that would be otherwise good, to

be excluded because it is feared the child may not completely grasp it.

He may read plenty of verse that is beyond him somewhat and be all the

better for having done so. The thing to be avoided is poetry that is not

poetry. He may be allowed to read verse at times that would not be

suitable for learning by heart. But what he learns thoroughly must be

through and through great poetry. And it matters little what form it may

have: ballad, song, fairy poem--he will learn to know it and to love it.

Nor is it to be always within the reach of his intellect; his feelings

will carry him safely beyond the narrow range of understanding.

If he would reach the boy, the teacher must find a point of contact

between the home life and the altogether new life in the school. This

point is without doubt the nursery rhymes. Wise indeed are parents who

have taught these melodies before the school age has been reached, for

the teacher can start at once with the poems he intends to have learned.

But where these rhymes have not been mastered in the home, it is

imperative on the part of the first-grade teacher to have them mastered

in the first school year. For the teacher who hesitates about the

advisability of using the Mother Goose melodies, it may be well to state

their claim by a quotation from Charles Welsh in his modest but most

excellent collection called "A Book of Nursery Rhymes": "The direct

simplicity, dramatic imagination, and spontaneous humour of the nursery

rhymes of Mother Goose will probably never be excelled by any modern

verse. They will for the most part doubtless remain for all time 'the

light literature of the infant scholar.' Although some fragments of what

has been written since the collection was first made may go to swell the

volume of this inheritance from past ages, the selection of any

permanent addition will be made finally by the mother and the child. The

choice will be by no means a haphazard one, for it will be founded on

basal elements of human character, and it will, for the very same cause,

be an absolutely autocratic choice. Experience has proved these old

rhymes and jingles to be best fitted for the awakening intelligence of

the child. The appeal to the imagination by evoking a sense of wonder

accounts for the abiding place which these rhymes and jingles have in

the literature of the nursery." The truth of these words is so evident

that the teacher who would make the learning of poetry by heart a

pleasure must surely recognize such rhymes as the hitching-on place

between the literature of the home and that of the school.

Next in simplicity, directness, and in the interest of its appeal is

verse in the ballad form. It is the easiest of all poetry to learn, for

it tells a dramatic tale in a simple way. But there are few short

ballads in the language suited to the grammar grades, and there is not

sufficient time for learning the longer ones by heart. Many of the best

old English ballads have difficulties for the child in the number of

obsolete words that they contain. These two things make it difficult to

use this absorbing field of poetry as subject-matter for learning by

heart. It is probably best to have the boy come to know the stories of

the ballads by hearing a frequent reading of them aloud by the teacher.

Of the ballads selected for such reading the teacher must go to the old

English field to get the greater number; but the modern field must not

be neglected, for no teacher could omit that powerful yet simple work of

genius, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Its charm in holding the

hearer is as great as was the charm of the old mariner's eye itself when

telling the tale. If such a poem has been listened to in the elementary

school, it can be taught with greater ease in the secondary school. The

same thing is true of many poems.

The greater number of selections that follow these two simple and direct

types, the nursery rhyme and the ballad, must be classic lyrics, fairly

well suited to the boy, and it matters little whether the form be song,

sonnet, ode, elegy, or that of Hebrew verse. In making these selections

poems of a martial nature are not to be altogether neglected; but they

must have fire, for without it a war ode is one of the most obsolete

works of the human intellect. An objection may be raised to the effect

that this type of poem is not suited to girls. To this objection the

answer may be made, that what is good literature for a boy ought to be

good literature for a girl. Will not a girl appreciate that great poem

of a sea fight, "The 'Revenge'"? It seems unwise to put in a list of

poems to be learned by heart an example of nonsense verse. This verse

evidently has a definite place in the intellectual equipment of the

child, and he may pick it up later of his own accord. No one would

knowingly, however, deprive him of "The Owl and the Pussy Cat," or "The

Jabberwocky"; even grown-ups dote on "Little Billee," as Thackeray

doubtless did himself. We must all fool more or less--even in verse.

Some teachers will ask how poetry is to be taught. To that question the

absolute answer is: through the ear. All poetry is to be read aloud and

well read. The dry-as-dust fellow who wants to read it merely as prose

should be indicted for a crime against art. Poetry must be read

musically and with a natural time and swing. At this point it should be

understood that part of the work of a teacher is to develop a good

reading tone of voice. The present-day tendencies toward shrieking and a

mouthing of words are most deplorable tendencies. Let the teacher first

master the poem and then teach it by word of mouth, and teach it as

music. It will finally impress itself on the child. Now this reading by

which the poem is to be taught is to be merely a good natural

reading--not the affected and exaggerated one of the elocutionist. Let

the child get the idea that he must say the poem over and over until it

has become his own. There is much pleasure in saying poetry aloud when

one is walking by himself--a rare luxury in modern city or suburban

life. It does not matter if passers-by look on this practice as a sort

of lunacy, for it is a most commendable kind of lunacy to have and one

that all persons are not so lucky as to possess.

So much is inviting us that no claim is made that the included list is

by any means the best one hundred poems. But it is one that the

experience of some years of schoolroom work has proved passing good. At

least it is good enough for the teacher who has not made a thorough

study of the subject. This, that, and t'other substitute might be

offered; but when all is said, the selections as they stand, if well

mastered, will be something of a king's treasury to the boy.

For the convenience of the teacher the selections are given complete.

With but few exceptions the poems are unabridged and under the original

titles. When an extract has been made from a longer poem, the first

verse of the selection has generally been given as a title. All poems

might be remembered by first verses rather than by titles, and every

anthology should have an alphabetical index to first verses. The poems

as given below will vary in their appeal largely according to the mood

of the teacher and his natural temperament; but he can teach no poem

well unless he has mastered it himself and has come to appreciate it.

There are a few selections, however, as "The Fairy Life," "The Forsaken

Merman," and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," that are so wholly

delightful that the teacher may hold them as favourite children of the

imagination. Let the teacher master the selections given below, and if

he so choose tear out the pages containing them and then throw the rest

of the book away; for if he truly knows these poems by heart, he will no

longer be a stranger to literature of power, and the purpose of this

book will have been fulfilled.

PART II

SELECTIONS FOR MEMORIZING

FIRST YEAR

MOTHER GOOSE SONGS

I

Hark, hark,

The dogs do bark,

The beggars are coming to town;

Some in tags,

Some in rags,

And some in velvet gowns.

II

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.

Some like it hot,

Some like it cold,

Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

III

"Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?"

"I've been to London to look at the Queen."

"Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there?"

"I frightened a little mouse under a chair."

IV

Three mice went into a hole to spin;

Puss passed by and Puss looked in:

"What are you doing, my little men?"

"Weaving coats for gentlemen."

"Please let me help you to wind off your threads."

"Ah, no, Mistress Pussy, you'd bite off our heads."

V

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,

The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.

Where's the boy that looks after the sheep?

He's under the haycock, fast asleep.

"Will you wake him?" "No, not I;

For if I do, he'll be sure to cry."

VI

Sleep, baby, sleep!

Our cottage vale is deep:

The little lamb is on the green,

With snowy fleece so soft and clean.

Sleep, baby, sleep!

Sleep, baby, sleep!

Thy rest shall angels keep:

While on the grass the lamb shall feed,

And never suffer want or need.

Sleep, baby, sleep!

VII

Hush thee, my babby,

Lie still with thy daddy,

Thy mammy has gone to the mill,

To grind thee some wheat

To get thee some meat,

And so, my dear babby, lie still.

VIII

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,

Upstairs and downstairs, in his nightgown,

Rapping at the window, crying through the lock,

"Are the children in their beds? now it's eight o'clock."

LITTLE BO-PEEP

Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep,

And can't tell where to find them;

Leave them alone and they'll come home,

And bring their tails behind them.

Little Bo-peep fell fast asleep,

And dreamt she heard them bleating;

But when she awoke she found it a joke,

For still they all were fleeting.

Then up she took her little crook,

Determined for to find them;

She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,

For they'd left all their tails behind 'em.

--MOTHER GOOSE.

I SAW A SHIP A-SAILING

I saw a ship a-sailing,

A-sailing on the sea;

And, oh! it was all laden

With pretty things for thee.

There were comfits in the cabin,

And apples in the hold;

The sails were made of silk,

And the masts were made of gold.

The four-and-twenty sailors

That stood between the decks

Were four-and-twenty white mice,

With chains about their necks.

The captain was a duck,

With a packet on his back;

And when the ship began to move,

The captain said, "Quack! quack!"

--MOTHER GOOSE.

THREE HAPPY THOUGHT SONGS

I

The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

II

The rain is raining all around,

It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea.

III

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings

And nests among the trees;

The sailor sings of ropes and things

In ships upon the seas.

The children sing in far Japan,

The children sing in Spain;

The organ with the organ man

Is singing in the rain.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

BOATS SAIL ON THE RIVERS

Boats sail on the rivers,

And ships sail on the seas;

But clouds that sail across the sky

Are prettier far than these.

There are bridges on the rivers,

As pretty as you please;

But the bow that bridges heaven

And overtops the trees,

And builds a road from earth to sky,

Is prettier far than these.

--CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you;

But when the leaves hang trembling

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I;

But when the trees bow down their heads

The wind is passing by.

--CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

THE FRIENDLY COW

The friendly cow all red and white

I love with all my heart;

She gives me milk with all her might,

To eat with apple tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,

And yet she cannot stray,

All in the pleasant open air,

The pleasant light of day.

And blown by all the winds that pass,

And wet with all the showers,

She walks among the meadow grass

And eats the meadow flowers.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

WINDY NIGHTS

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

BED IN SUMMER

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle light;

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

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.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

WHAT DOES LITTLE BIRDIE SAY?

What does little birdie say,

In her nest at peep of day?

Let me fly, says little birdie,

Mother, let me fly away.

Birdie, rest a little longer,

Till the little wings are stronger.

So she rests a little longer,

Then she flies away.

What does little baby say,

In her bed at peep of day?

Baby says, like little birdie,

Let me rise and fly away.

Baby, sleep a little longer,

Till the little limbs are stronger.

If she sleeps a little longer,

Baby too shall fly away.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

A SLUMBER SONG

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Thy father is tending the sheep:

Thy mother is shaking the dreamland tree,

And down comes a little dream on thee.

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Sleep, baby, sleep.

The large stars are the sheep:

The little stars are the lambs, I guess,

And the bright moon is the shepherdess.

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Our Saviour loves His sheep:

He is the Lamb of God on high,

Who for our sakes came down to die.

Sleep, baby, sleep.

--_From the German by_ CAROLINE SOUTHEY.

PSALM XXIII

The Lord is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

For thou art with me;

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me

In the presence of mine enemies:

Thou anointest my head with oil;

My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

--KING DAVID.

SECOND YEAR

THE LIGHT-HEARTED FAIRY

Oh, who is so merry, so merry, heigh ho!

As the light-hearted fairy? heigh ho,

Heigh ho!

He dances and sings

To the sound of his wings

With a hey and a heigh and a ho.

Oh, who is so merry, so airy, heigh ho!

As the light-headed fairy? heigh ho,

Heigh ho!

His nectar he sips

From the primroses' lips

With a hey and a heigh and a ho.

Oh, who is so merry, so merry, heigh ho!

As the light-footed fairy? heigh ho,

Heigh ho!

The night is his noon

And his sun is the moon,

With a hey and a heigh and a ho.

--UNKNOWN.

THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows for my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still

That sits upon the pillow-hill,

And sees before him, dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

MY SHADOW

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me.

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

SWEET AND LOW

Sweet and low, sweet and low,

Wind of the western sea;

Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea.

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,

Father will come to thee soon;

Rest, rest on mother's breast,

Father will come to thee soon;

Father will come to his babe in the nest,

Silver sails all out of the west

Under the silver moon;

Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

LULLABY FOR TITANIA

_First Fairy_

You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;

Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong;

Come not near our fairy queen.

_Chorus_

Philomel, with melody

Sing in our sweet lullaby;

Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby:

Never harm,

Nor spell, nor charm,

Come our lovely lady nigh;

So, good night, with lullaby.

_Second Fairy_

Weaving spiders, come not here;

Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence;

Beetles black, approach not near;

Worm nor snail, do no offence.

_Chorus_

Philomel, with melody

Sing in our sweet lullaby;

Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby:

Never harm,

Nor spell, nor charm,

Come our lovely lady nigh;

So, good night, with lullaby.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

AN OLD GAELIC CRADLE SONG

Hush! the waves are rolling in,

White with foam, white with foam!

Father toils amid the din;

But baby sleeps at home.

Hush! the winds roar hoarse and deep.

On they come, on they come!

Brother seeks the lazy sheep;

But baby sleeps at home.

Hush! the rain sweeps o'er the knowes,

Where they roam, where they roam;

Sister goes to seek the cows;

But baby sleeps at home.

--UNKNOWN.

CHILD-SONGS

I

THE CITY CHILD

Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander?

Whither from this pretty home, the home where mother dwells?

"Far, and far away," said the dainty little maiden,

"All among the gardens, auriculas, anemones,

Roses and lilies and Canterbury-bells."

Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander?

Whither from this pretty house, this city-house of ours?

"Far and far away," said the dainty little maiden,

"All among the meadows, the clover and the clematis,

Daisies and kingcups, and honeysuckle-flowers."

II

MINNIE AND WINNIE

Minnie and Winnie

Slept in a shell.

Sleep, little ladies!

And they slept well.

Pink was the shell within,

Silver without;

Sounds of the great sea

Wander'd about.

Sleep, little ladies!

Wake not soon!

Echo on echo

Dies to the moon.

Two bright stars

Peep'd into the shell.

"What are they dreaming of?

Who can tell?"

Started a green linnet

Out of the croft;

Wake, little ladies,

The sun is aloft!

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

THE LAMB

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, and bade thee feed

By the stream and o'er the mead;

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice;

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.

He is called by thy name,

For He calls Himself a Lamb:--

He is meek, and He is mild;

He became a little child:

I, a child, and thou, a lamb,

We are called by His name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee;

Little Lamb, God bless thee.

--WILLIAM BLAKE.

THE FAIRIES

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren't go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

Down along the rocky shore

Some make their home:

They live on crispy pancakes

Of yellow tide-foam;

Some in the reeds

Of the black mountain lake,

With frogs for their watch-dogs,

All night awake.

By the craggy hill-side,

Through the mosses bare,

They have planted thorn-trees

For pleasure here and there.

Is any man so daring

As dig them up in spite,

He shall find their sharpest thorns

In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren't go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl's feather!

--WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

SPRING

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Spring, the sweet Spring!

--THOMAS NASH.

LADY MOON

"I love the moon and the moon loves me;

God bless the moon and God bless me."--Old Song.

"Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving?"

"Over the sea."

"Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving?"

"All that love me."

"Are you not tired with rolling, and never

Resting to sleep?

Why look so pale and so sad as forever

Wishing to weep?"

"Ask me not this, little child, if you love me;

You are too bold.

I must obey the great Father above me,

And do as I'm told."

--LORD HOUGHTON.

SONG TO NAOMI

Entreat me not to leave thee,

Or to return from following after thee;

For whither thou goest, I will go;

And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;

Thy people shall be my people,

And thy God my God;

Where thou diest, will I die,

And there will I be buried;

The Lord do so to me,

And more also,

If aught but death part thee and me.

--RUTH THE MOABITESS.

THIRD YEAR

THE WIND

I saw you toss the kites on high

And blow the birds about the sky;

And all around I heard you pass,

Like ladies' skirts across the grass;

O wind, a-blowing all day long,

O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,

But always you yourself you hid.

I felt you push, I heard you call,

I could not see yourself at all:

O wind, a-blowing all day long,

O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,

O blower, are you young or old?

Are you a beast of field and tree,

Or just a stronger child than me?

O wind, a-blowing all day long,

O wind, that sings so loud a song!

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

ARIEL'S SONGS

I

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

II

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd

The wild waves whist,--

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow.

The watch-dogs bark:

Bow-wow.

Hark, hark! I hear

The strain of strutting chanticleer

Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow!

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

SONGS OF GOOD CHEER

I

When daffodils begin to peer,

With heigh the doxy over the dale,

Why then comes in the sweet o' the year:

For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

II

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,

And merrily hent the stile-a:

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

III

A great while ago the world began,

With heigh-ho the wind and the rain:

But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THE OWL

When cats run home and light is come,

And dew is cold upon the ground,

And the far-off stream is dumb,

And the whirring sail goes round,

And the whirring sail goes round;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,

And rarely smells the new-mown hay,

And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch

Twice or thrice his roundelay,

Twice or thrice his roundelay;

Alone and warming his five wits,

The white owl in the belfry sits.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION

Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,

The linnet, and thrush, say, "I love and I love!"

In the winter they're silent--the wind is so strong.

What it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song.

But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,

And singing, and loving,--all come back together.

But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,

The green fields below him, the blue sky above,

That he sings, and he sings; and forever sings he--

"I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"

--SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

ROBIN REDBREAST

Good-bye, good-bye to Summer!

For Summer's nearly done;

The garden smiling faintly,

Cool breezes in the sun;

Our thrushes now are silent,

Our swallows flown away,--

But Robin's here with coat of brown,

And ruddy breast-knot gay.

Robin, Robin Redbreast,

O Robin dear!

Robin sings so sweetly

In the falling of the year.

Bright yellow, red, and orange,

The leaves come down in hosts;

The trees are Indian princes,

But soon they'll turn to ghosts;

The scanty pears and apples

Hang russet on the bough;

It's Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late,

'Twill soon be Winter now.

Robin, Robin Redbreast,

O Robin dear!

And what will this poor Robin do?

For pinching days are near.

The fire-side for the cricket,

The wheat-stack for the mouse,

When trembling night-winds whistle

And moan all round the house.

The frosty ways like iron,

The branches plumed with snow,--

Alas! in winter dead and dark,

Where can poor Robin go?

Robin, Robin Redbreast,

O Robin dear!

And a crumb of bread for Robin,

His little heart to cheer!

--WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE

When children are playing alone on the green,

In comes the playmate that never was seen.

When children are happy and lonely and good,

The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

Nobody heard him and nobody saw,

His is a picture you never could draw,

But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,

When children are happy and playing alone.

He lies in the laurel, he runs on the grass,

He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;

Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,

The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!

He loves to be little, he hates to be big,

'Tis he that inhabits the caves that you dig;

'Tis he when you play with your soldiers of tin

That sides with the Frenchmen and never can win.

'Tis he, when at night you go off to your bed,

Bids you go to your sleep and not trouble your head;

For wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf,

'Tis he will take care of your playthings himself!

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

A LAUGHING SONG

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,

And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;

When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,

And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;

When Mary, and Susan, and Emily,

With their sweet round mouths sing, "Ha, ha, he!"

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,

Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:

Come live, and be merry, and join with me

To sing the sweet chorus of "Ha, ha, he!"

--WILLIAM BLAKE.

LULLABY OF AN INFANT CHIEF

Oh, hush thee, my babie! thy sire was a knight,

Thy mother a lady, both lovely and bright;

The woods and the glens, from the towers which we see,

They all are belonging, dear babie, to thee.

Oh, fear not the bugle, though loudly it blows,

It calls but the warders that guard thy repose;

Their bows would be bended, their blades would be red,

Ere the step of a foeman draw near to thy bed.

Oh, hush thee, my babie! the time soon will come,

When thy sleep shall be broken by trumpet and drum;

Then hush thee, my darling! take rest while you may;

For strife comes with manhood, and waking with day.

--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THE FAIRY QUEEN

(An Old Song)

Come follow, follow me,

You fairy elves that be,

Which circle on the green;

Come, follow Mab your queen.

Hand in hand let's dance around,

For this place is fairy ground.

The grasshopper, gnat, and fly,

Serve for our minstrelsy;

Grace said, we dance a while

And so the time beguile:

And if the moon doth hide her head,

The glowworm lights us home to bed.

On tops of dewy grass

So nimbly do we pass,

The young and tender stalk

Ne'er bends when we do walk;

Yet in the morning may be seen

Where we the night before have been.

--UNKNOWN.

RING OUT, WILD BELLS

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

SONG OF SPRING

The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh,

Leaping upon the mountains,

Skipping upon the hills.

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart:

Behold, he standeth behind our wall,

He looketh forth at the windows,

Showing himself through the lattice.

My beloved spake and said unto me:

Rise up, my love, my fair one,

And come away.

For, lo, the winter is past,

The rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth;

The time of the singing of birds is come,

And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,

And the vines with the tender grape

Give a good smell.

Arise, my love, my fair one,

And come away.

--KING SOLOMON.

FOURTH YEAR

PIPPA'S SONG

The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn:

God's in his heaven--

All's right with the world!

--ROBERT BROWNING.

A SEA DIRGE

Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Hark! now I hear them,--

Ding, dong, bell.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

HARK! HARK! THE LARK

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies;

And winking Mary-buds begin

To ope their golden eyes:

With everything that pretty bin,

My lady sweet, arise;

Arise, arise!

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

WINTER

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marion's nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;

Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

A FAIRY'S SONG

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green:

The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

A LAND DIRGE

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field mouse, and the mole

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,

And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm:

But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men:

For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

--JOHN WEBSTER.

MY HEART LEAPS UP

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began,

So is it now I am a man,

So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man:

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

A MORNING SONG

Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day:

With night we banish sorrow;

Sweet air blow soft, mount larks aloft,

To give my Love good-morrow!

Wings from the wind to please her mind,

Notes from the lark I'll borrow;

Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale, sing,

To give my Love good-morrow;

To give my Love good-morrow

Notes from them both I'll borrow.

Wake from thy nest, Robin-red-breast,

Sing, birds, in every furrow;

And from each hill, let music shrill

Give my fair Love good-morrow!

Blackbird and thrush in every bush,

Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow!

You pretty elves, amongst yourselves,

Sing my fair Love good-morrow

To give my Love good-morrow;

Sing, birds, in every furrow!

--THOMAS HEYWOOD.

IN MARCH

The cock is crowing,

The stream is flowing,

The small birds twitter,

The lake doth glitter,

The green field sleeps in the sun:

The oldest and youngest

Are at work with the strongest:

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising,

There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated,

The snow has retreated,

And now doth fare ill

On the top of the bare hill;

The ploughboy is whooping--anon--anon:

There's joy in the mountains;

There's life in the fountains,

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing,

The rain is over and gone!

--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

CHORAL SONG TO THE ILLYRIAN PEASANTS

Up, up! ye dames, ye lasses gay!

To the meadows trip away.

'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn,

And scare the small birds from the corn.

Not a soul at home may stay:

For the shepherds must go

With lance and bow

To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.

Leave the hearth and leave the house

To the cricket and the mouse:

Find grannam out a sunny seat,

With babe and lambkin at her feet.

Not a soul at home may stay:

For the shepherds must go

With lance and bow

To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.

--SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

Come, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below.

Now my brothers call from the bay;

Now the great winds shoreward blow;

Now the salt tides seaward flow;

Now the wild white horses play,

Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Children dear, let us away.

This way, this way!

Call her once before you go.

Call once yet.

In a voice that she will know:

"Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear

(Call once more) to a mother's ear:

Children's voices, wild with pain.

Surely she will come again.

Call her once and come away.

This way, this way!

"Mother dear, we cannot stay.

The wild white horses foam and fret."

Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down.

Call no more.

One last look at the white-wall'd town,

And the little gray church on the windy shore.

Then come down.

She will not come though you call all day.

Come away, come away.

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?

In the caverns where we lay,

Through the surf and through the swell,

The far-off sound of a silver bell?

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,

Where the winds are all asleep;

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;

Where the salt weed sways in the stream;

Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,

Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;

Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,

Dry their mail, and bask in the brine;

Where great whales come sailing by,

Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

Round the world for ever and aye?

When did music come this way?

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me.

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,

And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,

When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.

She said, "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

In the little gray church on the shore to-day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee."

I said, "Go up, dear heart, through the waves.

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves."

She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?

"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.

Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say.

Come," I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town,

Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,

To the little gray church on the windy hill.

From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.

We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:

"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.

Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone.

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."

But, ah! she gave me never a look,

For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book.

Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.

Come away, children, call no more.

Come away, come down, call no more.

Down, down, down;

Down to the depths of the sea.

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy;

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun."

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the shuttle falls from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,

From a sorrow-clouded eye,

And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away, children.

Come, children, come down.

The hoarse wind blows colder;

Lights shine in the town.

She will start from her slumber

When gusts shake the door;

She will hear the winds howling,

Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us

The waves roar and whirl,

A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl.

Singing, "Here came a mortal,

But faithless was she:

And alone dwell for ever

The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,

When soft the winds blow;

When clear falls the moonlight;

When spring-tides are low:

When sweet airs come seaward

From heaths starr'd with broom;

And high rocks throw mildly

On the blanch'd sands a gloom:

Up the still, glistening beaches,

Up the creeks we will hie;

Over banks of bright seaweed

The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white, sleeping town;

At the church on the hill-side--

And then come back down,

Singing, "There dwells a loved one,

But cruel is she.

She left lonely forever

The kings of the sea."

--MATTHEW ARNOLD.

PSALM VIII

O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Who hast set thy glory above the heavens,

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength,

Because of thine enemies,

That thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,

The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man that thou art mindful of him?

And the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,

And hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen,

Yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,

And whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,

How excellent is thy name in all the earth!

--KING DAVID.

FIFTH YEAR

THE BUGLE SONG

The splendour falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

O sweet and far from cliff and scar

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,

They faint on hill or field or river:

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

THE BROOK

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go.

But I go on forever.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

HYMN TO DIANA

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,

Now the sun is laid to sleep,

Seated in thy silver chair

State in wonted manner keep:

Hesperus entreats thy light,

Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade

Dare itself to interpose;

Cynthia's shining orb was made

Heaven to clear when day did close:

Bless us then with wished sight,

Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart

And thy crystal-shining quiver;

Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever:

Thou that mak'st a day of night,

Goddess excellently bright!

--BEN JONSON.

THE BURNING BABE

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty babe, all burning bright, did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears

were fed:--

"Alas!" quoth He, "but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

"My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am, to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood."--

With this He vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away;

And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas-day.

--ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

AT SEA

A wet sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast

And fills the white and rustling sail

And bends the gallant mast;

And bends the gallant mast, my boys,

While like the eagle free

Away the good ship flies, and leaves

Old England on the lee.

O for a soft and gentle wind!

I heard a fair one cry;

But give to me the snoring breeze

And white waves heaving high;

And white waves heaving high, my lads,

The good ship tight and free:--

The world of waters is our home,

And merry men are we.

There's tempest in yon horned moon,

And lightning in yon cloud;

But hark the music, mariners!

The wind is piping loud;

The wind is piping loud, my boys,

The lightning flashes free--

While the hollow oak our palace is,

Our heritage the sea.

--ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

WHERE LIES THE LAND?

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,

Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;

Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below

The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,

How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!

The dripping sailor on the reeling mast

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

--ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

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!

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i' the sun,

Seeking the food he eats

And pleased with what he gets--

Come hither, come hither, come hither!

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

TO DAFFODILS

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon:

As yet the early-rising Sun

Has not attain'd his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray'd together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay

As you, or anything.

We die,

As your hours do, and dry

Away

Like to the Summer's rain;

Or as the pearls of Morning's dew

Ne'er to be found again.

--ROBERT HERRICK.

AUTUMN

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,

The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying;

And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,

Is lying.

Come, Months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array,--

Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling,

The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling,

For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone

To his dwelling.

Come, Months, come away;

Put on white, black, and gray;

Let your light sisters play;

Ye, follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

--PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW

From Oberon, in fairy land,

The king of ghosts and shadows there,

Mad Robin I, at his command,

Am sent to view the night-sports here.

What revel rout

Is kept about,

In every corner where I go,

I will o'ersee,

And merry be,

And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I fly

About this airy welkin soon,

And, in a minute's space, descry

Each thing that's done below the moon.

There's not a hag

Or ghost shall wag,

Or cry 'ware goblins, where I go;

But, Robin, I

Their feast will spy,

And send them home with ho, ho, ho!

Whene'er such wanderers I meet,

As from their night-sports they trudge home,

With counterfeiting voice I greet,

And call them on with me to roam;

Through woods, through lakes,

Through bogs, through brakes,

Or else, unseen, with them I go,

All in the nick

To play some trick,

And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man,

Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;

And to a horse I turn me can,

To trip and trot about them round.

But if to ride,

My back they stride,

More swift than wind away I go,

O'er hedge and lands.

Through pools and ponds,

I hurry, laughing, ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadows green,

We nightly dance our heyday guise;

And to our fairy King and Queen,

We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.

When larks 'gin sing,

Away we fling;

And babes new born steal as we go;

And elf in bed,

We leave instead,

And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I

Thus nightly revell'd to and fro;

And for my pranks men call me by

The name of Robin Good-fellow.

Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,

Who haunt the nights,

The hags and goblins do me know;

And beldames old

So _vale_, _vale_! ho, ho, ho!

--UNKNOWN.

BOOT AND SADDLE

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Rescue my castle before the hot day

Brightens to blue from its silvery gray,

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;

Many's the friend there, will listen and pray

"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay--

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,

Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array,

Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest, and gay,

Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!

I've better counsellors; what counsel they?

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

--ROBERT BROWNING.

PSALM XIX

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech,

And night unto night sheweth knowledge.

There is no speech nor language,

Where their voice is not heard.

Their line is gone out through all the earth,

And their words to the end of the world.

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,

And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

His going forth is from the end of the heaven,

And his circuit unto the ends of it:

And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul:

The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart:

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever:

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:

Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is thy servant warned:

And in keeping of them there is great reward.

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have

dominion over me:

Then shall I be upright,

And I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be

acceptable in thy sight,

O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

--KING DAVID.

SIXTH YEAR

THE NORTHERN STAR

(A Tynemouth Ship)

The "Northern Star"

Sail'd over the bar

Bound to the Baltic Sea;

In the morning gray

She stretch'd away:--

'Twas a weary day to me!

For many an hour

In sleet and shower

By the lighthouse rock I stray;

And watch till dark

For the winged bark

Of him that is far away.

The castle's bound

I wander round,

Amidst the grassy graves:

But all I hear

Is the north-wind drear,

And all I see are the waves.

The "Northern Star"

Is set afar!

Set in the Baltic Sea:

And the waves have spread

The sandy bed

That holds my Love from me.

--UNKNOWN.

THE FIRST SWALLOW

The gorse is yellow on the heath;

The banks of speedwell flowers are gay;

The oaks are budding, and beneath,

The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,

The silver wreath of May.

The welcome guest of settled spring,

The swallow, too, is come at last

Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,

I saw her dash with rapid wing,

And hail'd her as she past.

Come, summer visitant, attach

To my reed roof your nest of clay,

And let my ear your music catch,

Low twittering underneath the thatch,

At the gray dawn of day.

--CHARLOTTE SMITH.

BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember'd not.

Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

Heap'd in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perish'd long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchid died amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague

on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and

glen.

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are

still,

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.

--WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sail'd the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth;

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,

Had sailed the Spanish Main:

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,

For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,

A gale from the North-east;

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frightened steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale,

That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat,

Against the stinging blast;

He cut a rope from a broken spar,

And bound her to a mast.

"O father! I hear the church bells ring.

O say, what may it be?"

"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"--

And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,

O say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live

In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,

O say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

With his face turned to the skies;

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

That saved she might be;

And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves,

On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf,

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a weary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side,

Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts, went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

--HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE SANDS OF DEE

"O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands of Dee."

The western wind was wild and dark with foam,

And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand,

And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land:

And never home came she.

"O is it weed, or fish, or floating hair--

A tress of golden hair,

A drowned maiden's hair,

Above the nets at sea?"

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair

Among the stakes of Dee.

They row'd her in across the rolling foam

The cruel crawling foam,

The cruel hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea.

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,

Across the sands of Dee.

--CHARLES KINGSLEY.

CANADIAN BOAT SONG

Faintly as tolls the evening chime,

Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time;

Soon as the woods on shore look dim,

We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast;

The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past.

Why should we yet our sail unfurl?

There is not a breath the blue wave to curl;

But when the wind blows off the shore,

Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.

Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past.

Ottawa's tide! this trembling moon

Shall see us float over thy surges soon:

Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,

Oh! grant us cool heavens, and favouring airs.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

The Rapids are near, and the daylight's past.

--THOMAS MOORE.

RETURN OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

O wedding-guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide, wide sea:

So lonely 'twas, that God himself

Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,

'Tis sweeter far to me,

To walk together to the kirk

With a goodly company!

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends,

And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

--SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

NOW FADES THE LAST LONG STREAK OF SNOW

Now fades the last long streak of snow,

Now burgeons every maze of quick

About the flowering squares, and thick

By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,

The distance takes a lovelier hue,

And drown'd in yonder living blue

The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,

The flocks are whiter down the vale,

And milkier every milky sail

On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives

In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky

To build and brood; that live their lives,

From land to land; and in my breast

Spring wakens too; and my regret

Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace

Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,

Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,

Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near

Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;

At Dueffield, 'twas morning as plain as could be;

And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,

So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,

And against him the cattle stood black every one,

To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past,

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,

With resolute shoulders, each butting away

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray;

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;

And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance

O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon

His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!

Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,

We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze

Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,

And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,

And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan

Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;

And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight

Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,

With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,

And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is--friends flocking round

As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

--ROBERT BROWNING.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen;

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd;

And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride:

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal,

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

--LORD BYRON.

PSALM XCI

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High

Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress:

My God; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,

And from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers,

And under his wings shalt thou trust:

His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;

Nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;

Nor for the destruction that wasteth by noon-day.

A thousand shall fall at thy side,

And ten thousand at thy right hand;

But it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold

And see the reward of the wicked.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge,

Even the most High, thy habitation;

There shall no evil befall thee,

Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For he shall give his angels charge over thee,

To keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands,

Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:

The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:

I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:

I will be with him in trouble;

I will deliver him, and honour him.

With long life will I satisfy him,

And show him my salvation.

--KING DAVID.

SEVENTH YEAR

THE PILGRIM

Who would true valour see

Let him come hither.

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather:

There's no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first-avow'd intent

To be a Pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round

With dismal stories,

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright;

He'll with a giant fight;

But he will have a right

To be a Pilgrim.

Nor enemy, nor fiend,

Can daunt his spirit;

He knows he at the end

Shall Life inherit:--

Then, fancies, fly away;

He'll not fear what men say;

He'll labour night and day,

To be a Pilgrim.

--JOHN BUNYAN.

THE CLOUD

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet birds every one,

When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast,

As she dances in the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under;

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the Blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,

Lightning, my pilot, sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the Thunder--

It struggles and howls by fits.

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the Genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I, all the while, bask in heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

--PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

THE GATHERING SONG OF DONALD THE BLACK

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu

Pibroch of Donuil,

Wake thy wild voice anew,

Summon Clan Conuil.

Come away, come away,

Hark to the summons!

Come in your war-array,

Gentles and commons.

Come from deep glen, and

From mountain so rocky;

The war-pipe and pennon

Are at Inverlocky.

Come every hill-plaid, and

True heart that wears one,

Come every steel blade, and

Strong hand that bears one.

Leave untended the herd,

The flock without shelter;

Leave the corpse uninterr'd,

The bride at the altar;

Leave the deer, leave the steer,

Leave nets and barges:

Come with your fighting gear,

Broadswords and targes.

Come as the winds come, when

Forests are rended,

Come as the waves come, when

Navies are stranded:

Faster come, faster come,

Faster and faster,

Chief, vassal, page and groom,

Tenant and master.

Fast they come, fast they come;

See how they gather!

Wide waves the eagle plume

Blended with heather.

Cast your plaids, draw your blades,

Forward each man set!

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,

Knell for the onset!

--SIR WALTER SCOTT.

INDIAN SUMMER

From gold to gray

Our mild, sweet day

Of Indian summer fades too soon:

But tenderly

Above the sea

Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's moon.

In its pale fire

The village spire

Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance:

The painted walls

Whereon it falls

Transfigured stand in marble trance.

--JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

MORNING

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee

Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,

Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles,

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

And love to live in dimple sleek;

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides.

Come, and trip it as you go

On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;

And if I give thee honour due,

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreproved pleasures free;

To hear the Lark begin his flight,

And singing startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

Then to come, in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good morrow,

Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine:

While the Cock with lively din,

Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

And to the stack, or the barn door,

Stoutly struts his dames before,

Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn

Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,

From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill.

Sometime walking not unseen

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,

Right against the eastern gate,

Where the great Sun begins his state,

Robed in flames and amber light,

The clouds in thousand liveries dight:

While the ploughman, near at hand,

Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,

And the milkmaid singeth blithe,

And the mower whets his scythe,

And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

--JOHN MILTON.

WHO IS SYLVIA?

Who is Sylvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heaven such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness:

Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness,

And, being help'd, inhabits there.

Then to Sylvia let us sing,

That Sylvia is excelling;

She excels each mortal thing

Upon the dull earth dwelling:

To her let us garlands bring.

--WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

THE REVENGE

(A Ballad of the Fleet)

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,

And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away:

"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!"

Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward;

But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,

And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.

We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.

But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."

So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day,

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below;

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,

To the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

"Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."

And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,

For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."

Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,

With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;

For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,

And the little Revenge ran on thro' the long sea-lane between.

Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from their decks and laugh'd,

Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft

Running on and on, till delay'd

By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,

And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,

Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day,

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,

And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went

Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,

Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and

flame;

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her

shame.

And some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no

more--

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

For he said "Fight on! fight on!"

Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,

With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,

But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,

And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,

And he said "Fight on! fight on!"

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer

sea,

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we still

could sting,

So they watch'd what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,

But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim'd for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;

And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it

spent;

And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;

But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,

"We have fought such a fight for a day and a night

As may never be fought again!

We have won great glory, my men!

And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die--does it matter when?

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"

And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:

"We have children, we have wives,

And the Lord hath spared our lives.

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow."

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do;

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap

That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,

But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,

And they mann'd the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,

And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;

When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and

their flags,

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of

Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest

By all their country's wishes blest!

When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,

Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,

She there shall dress a sweeter sod

Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung,

By forms unseen their dirge is sung:

There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,

To bless the turf that wraps their clay;

And Freedom shall awhile repair

To dwell a weeping hermit there!

--WILLIAM COLLINS.

A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

A life on the ocean wave,

A home on the rolling deep,

Where the scattered waters rave,

And the winds their revels keep!

Like an eagle caged, I pine

On this dull, unchanging shore:

Oh! give me the flashing brine,

The spray and the tempest's roar!

Once more on the deck I stand

Of my own swift-gliding craft:

Set sail! farewell to the land!

The gale follows fair abaft.

We shoot through the sparkling foam

Like an ocean-bird set free:

Like the ocean-bird, our home

We'll find far out on the sea.

The land is no longer in view,

The clouds have begun to frown:

But with a stout vessel and crew,

We'll say, Let the storm come down!

And the song of our heart shall be,

While the winds and waters rave,

A home on the rolling sea!

A life on the ocean wave!

--EPES SARGENT.

THE EAGLE

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

--ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.

PSALM XC

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place

In all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Thou turnest man to destruction;

And sayest, Return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight

Are but as yesterday when it is past,

And as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood;

They are as a sleep:

In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger,

And by thy wrath are we troubled.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:

We spend our years as a tale that is told.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

Yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

So teach us to number our days,

That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long?

And let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

O satisfy us early with thy mercy;

That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

And the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants,

And thy glory unto their children.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

And establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

--KING DAVID.

EIGHTH YEAR

THE CONCORD HYMN

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

--RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:--

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company;

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils.

--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main,--

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In Gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

And the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,--

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from Wreathed Horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them,--thou hast thy music too,

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

--JOHN KEATS.

TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--

The desert and illimitable air,--

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere;

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone--the abyss of heaven

Hath swallow'd up thy form--yet on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who from zone to zone

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

--WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer rul'd as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

--JOHN KEATS.

RECESSIONAL

God of our fathers, known of old--

Lord of our far-flung battle line--

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine--

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies--

The Captains and the Kings depart--

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away--

On dune and headland sinks the fire--

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--

Such boasting as the Gentiles use,

Or lesser breeds without the Law--

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard--

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding calls not Thee to guard--

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

--RUDYARD KIPLING.

SIR PATRICK SPENS

I. _The Sailing_

The king sits in Dunfermline town

Drinking the blude-red wine:

"O whare will I get a skeely skipper

To sail this new ship o' mine?"

O up and spak an eldern knight,

Sat at the king's right knee:

"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor

That ever sail'd the sea."

Our king has written a braid letter,

And seal'd it with his hand,

And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,

Was walking on the strand.

"To Noroway, to Noroway,

To Noroway o'er the faem;

The king's daughter o' Noroway,

'Tis thou must bring her hame."

The first word that Sir Patrick read

So loud, loud laugh'd he;

The neist word that Sir Patrick read

The tear blinded his e'e.

"O wha is this has done this deed

And tauld the king o' me,

To send us out, at this time o' year,

To sail upon the sea?

"Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,

Our ship must sail the faem;

The king's daughter o' Noroway,

'Tis we must fetch her hame."

They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn

Wi' a' the speed they may;

They hae landed in Noroway

Upon a Wodensday.

II. _The Return_

"Mak ready, mak ready, my merry men a'!

Our gude ship sails the morn."

"Now ever alack, my master dear,

I fear a deadly storm.

"I saw the new moon late yestreen

Wi' the auld moon in her arm;

And if we gang to sea, master,

I fear we'll come to harm."

They hadna sail'd a league, a league,

A league but barely three,

When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,

And gurly grew the sea.

The ankers brak, and the topmast lap,

It was sic a deadly storm:

And the waves cam owre the broken ship

Till a' her sides were torn.

"Go fetch a web o' the silken claith,

Another o' the twine,

And wap them into our ship's side,

And let nae the sea come in."

They fetch'd a web o' the silken claith

Another o' the twine,

And they wapp'd them round that gude ship's side,

But still the sea came in.

O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords

To wet their cork-heel'd shoon;

But lang or a' the play was play'd

They wat their hats aboon.

And mony was the feather bed

That flatter'd on the faem;

And mony was the gude lord's son

That never mair cam hame.

O lang, lang may the ladies sit,

Wi' their fans into their hand,

Before they see Sir Patrick Spens

Come sailing to the strand!

And lang, lang may the maidens sit

Wi' their gowd kames in their hair,

A-waiting for their ain dear loves!

For them they'll see nae mair.

Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour,

'Tis fifty fathoms deep;

And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,

Wi' the Scots lords at his feet!

--UNKNOWN.

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike th' inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes--

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbade to wade thro' slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate--

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,

Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he:

"The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn:"

_The Epitaph_

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A Youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

--THOMAS GRAY.

PSALM CIII

Bless the Lord, O my soul:

And all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

And forget not all his benefits:

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;

Who healeth all thy diseases;

Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;

Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies;

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things;

So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The Lord executeth righteousness

And judgment for all that are oppressed.

He made known his ways unto Moses,

His acts unto the children of Israel.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,

Slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide:

Neither will he keep his anger forever.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins;

Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth,

So great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

As far as the east is from the west,

So far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

Like as a father pitieth his children,

So the Lord pitieth them that fear him.

For he knoweth our frame;

He remembereth that we are dust.

As for man, his days are as grass:

As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;

And the place thereof shall know it no more.

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon

them that fear him,

And his righteousness unto children's children;

To such as keep his covenant,

And to those that remember his commandments to do them.

The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens;

And his kingdom ruleth over all.

Bless the Lord, ye his angels,

That excel in strength,

That do his commandments,

Hearkening unto the voice of his word.

Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts;

Ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.

Bless the Lord, all his works

In all places of his dominion:

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

--KING DAVID.

ANTHOLOGIES OF CHILDREN'S POEMS

IN addition to what the student has mastered by heart he needs to own

and keep within arm's reach a good anthology. He should first own "A

Children's Treasury of English Song," and about the time he is ready to

leave the elementary school the greatest of all collections of verse,

"The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English

Language," must fall into his hands. The next best collection is

doubtless "The Oxford Book of English Verse," by A. T. Quiller-Couch.

For ballad literature "The Oxford Book of English Ballads" by the

last-named editor and "The Ballad Book" by Allingham are both good. It

is to be hoped that if he has a taste for verse of the ballad form, the

boy may some day wander back to Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English

Poetry." An occasional boy who cares little for great poetry may have a

bent toward songs of war and daring. Though this tendency is to be

deplored if it comes late in the boy's school life, it is best to

satisfy it. A fairly good but not altogether judiciously selected

anthology for this purpose is Henley's "Lyra Heroica." From this reading

of poetry in anthologies the boy might go to the carefully edited and

selected volumes of the great poets in the Golden Treasury Series. The

step to choice complete editions is then easy.

It may chance that the boy who has once tasted of the honeydew of great

poetry and who has left the elementary school to take up the actual

affairs of life will go back to the authority of his teacher who first

pointed out to him such a pure pleasure for his quiet hours. If this

gratifying condition should come about, the teacher might name to him

the following poems that are still more rare in their appeal--as he will

surely come to know when he has felt the touch of "An Ode on a Grecian

Urn." Here are the titles: "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day,"

Shakespeare; "The Time of Year Thou May'st in Me Behold," Shakespeare;

"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont," Milton; "The World is too Much with

Us," Wordsworth; "Milton, Thou Should'st Be Living at This Hour,"

Wordsworth; "Tuscan, That Wander'st in the Realms of Gloom," Longfellow;

"Rose Aylmer," Landor; "Out of the Night That Covers Me," Henley; "Go

Fetch to Me a Pint o' Wine," Burns; "Proud Maisie is in the Woods,"

Scott; "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," Wordsworth; "Helen, Thy

Beauty is to Me," Poe; "She Walks in Beauty," Byron; "The Lost Leader,"

Browning; "It Was a Lover and His Lass," Shakespeare; "Callicles beneath

Etna," Arnold; "La Belle Dame sans Merci," Keats; "Ode to Evening,"

Collins; "Ode to a Skylark," Shelley; "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats;

"Kubla Khan," Coleridge; "Ulysses," Tennyson; "L'Allegro," Milton. From

these the boy may with the coming of manhood be led to heights of such

tunes of the masters as Wordsworth's powerful "Ode on the Intimations of

Immortality from Earliest Childhood," and Tennyson's song that is so

near to the heart of great things, "In Memoriam."

PART III

SOURCES OF STANDARD PROSE FOR CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

FAIRY TALES, HOUSEHOLD TALES, AND OTHER FANCIFUL STORIES

"In the olde times they were the only revivers of

drowsy age at midnight: old and young have with

his tales chim'd mattens till the cocks crow in

the morning: Batchelors and Maides with his tales

have compassed the Christmas fire-block till the

Curfew-bell rings, Candle out: the old Shepherd

and the young Plow boy after their day's labour

have carol'd out a Tale of Tom Thumb to make merry

with: and who but little Tom hath made long nights

seem short and heavy toyles easie?"

--Said in 1611 of the Tales of Tom Thumb.

IN that comforting essay, "An Apology for Idlers," Robert Louis

Stevenson tells us that it is by no means certain that a man's business

is the most important thing that he has to do. And somewhere else he has

remarked on a club of men in Brussels who talked about the commercial

affairs of Belgium during the day, but who at night came together to

discuss the more serious affairs of life. These views are in accord with

the Stevenson temperament that looked on life as made up of two worlds:

a real workaday one to be unflinchingly faced, no matter what the task

that came, and a fanciful one, a play world, that by its appeal to the

ideal nature created an atmosphere of joy that made the duties of the

real one more tolerable. His own life, so well balanced between work and

play, so sane and healthful and inspiring in its influence on all who

knew him or read his books, has shown what a romantic cast of mind can

get out of life, though it suffer the handicap of ill health and worldly

misfortune. The balance-wheel of his life was a playful imagination that

always "hath made long nights seem short and heavy toyles easie."

Stern materialism, cold, calculatingly just, impatient with the dreamer,

with no charity for lovable human frailties, has always mocked at the

notion of a fanciful place where great and glorious things are going on.

She spins no web from the threads of her imagination. The warp and woof

of her fabric are drawn from facts; and it comes from the loom all wool,

a yard wide, and used to cover the nakedness of real men and women. She

has never felt the free abandon of fairy land. Her heart has never

leap'd up at beholding a rainbow in the sky, a rainbow with the fabled

pot of gold--though she has toiled and sweat many a day for nothing more

than a mess of pottage. Whilst pointing the finger of scorn at the magic

lamp, the ogre's hen, or the seven-league boots, she plays the fool and

pays the fiddler in actual life merely because under it all there lurks

a passion for the marvellous, founded on chance. In the business world

this manifests itself in the perennial hope of a "bull market" or a

"bonanza." Of course, pleasures are largely a question of taste, not a

question of right, and it is everybody to his liking,--one may prefer

the counting house to the back-log at the drowsy hour of midnight,--yet

may we all be spared the time when fancy and romance cease to dominate

men. Without them life would become mediocre, stupid, dull.

It has been claimed that a nation without fancy and romance never can

hold a great place. Material prosperity without a corresponding

well-being in the things of the imagination is an unfortunate

prosperity. Its pleasures must necessarily be sensual pleasures that

grow out of luxury. They carry the man or woman too far away from the

land of childhood. Dickens saw this clearly when he said: "What

enchanted us in childhood and is captivating a million young fancies

now, has at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men

and women who have done their long day's work, and laid their gray heads

down to rest. It has greatly helped to keep us in some sense ever young,

by preserving through our worldly ways one slender tract not overgrown

with weeds, where we may walk with children sharing their delights." A

good thing it is to keep that slender tract free from weeds. And the

stronger the man, the more he needs to do it. Only a man who sees things

out of their right proportions and who is without a sense of humour

would scorn to renew his youth occasionally in the land of romance. If

in life the strongest and wisest men are good at a fight, they are still

better at a play. And it is no shame if their "Arabian Nights'

Entertainments" is more thumbed than their Bacon's "Essays." They may be

all the wiser for it. In Howard Pyle's delightful rendering of the Robin

Hood tales he gives this happy admonition in the introduction: "You who

so plod among serious things that you feel it a shame to give yourself

up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of

Fancy; you who think that life hath naught to do with innocent laughter

that can harm no one; these pages are not for you. Clap the leaves and

go no further than this, for I tell you plainly that if you will go

further you will be so scandalized by seeing good, sober folk of real

history so frisk and caper in gay colours and motley that you would not

know them but for the names tagged to them." And then he sees the secret

of making the heart beat young whilst carrying the burdens of grown-up

life, and he says, "The land of Fancy is of that pleasant kind that,

when you tire of it,--whisk,--you clap the leaves of this book together

and 'tis gone, and you are ready for everyday life, with no harm done."

The present age as it gives colouring to educational practices is a

matter-of-fact age. Whilst boasting of freedom of thought, it has fallen

into a despotism of fact. Like the Old Man of the Sea, this reign of

fact has been clutching at the neck of culture and railing at the play

of fancy until there is but precious little of the "merrie" life left to

look to. The men who cleared away the forest can be pardoned if they

lived their lives largely in the light of stern fact, and so might the

sons of these men; but those as many generations removed as the present

should be able to drop back to the even tenor of a domestic and school

life that recognizes the play of fanciful imagination as an essential

part of the business of living at all. No sooner had the founders of our

nation succeeded in giving men their long-coveted political freedom than

science, cock-sure of being able to solve the riddle of existence,

strode upon the scene and smote the favourite creatures of the

imagination hip and thigh. It not only played havoc with the fairies of

our fathers, but it came perilously near doing the same with their

faith. And as a result, a material and utilitarian tone has taken hold

of education in most places, and boys must be practical, scientific, and

wear old heads on young shoulders. This same tendency had begun in the

days of Charles Lamb, for he wrote the following protest to Coleridge:

"Knowledge must now come to the child in the shape of knowledge, and his

empty noddle must be turned with conceit at his own powers when he has

learnt that a horse is an animal and Billy is better than a horse and

such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales which made

the child a man while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger

than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little

walks of children than with men. Is there possibility of averting this

sore evil? Think of what you would have been now if, instead of being

fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed

with geography and natural history." And what must be said to

supplanting the subject of fairy life by the anatomy and physiology of

the human body? Is not a boy who knows the happy likeness of Old King

Cole or Allan-a-Dale as well educated as he who recognizes the picture

of an alcoholic liver? All this educational pother about having boys

practical and trained to reason instead of being imaginative and

romantic will die of its own accord some day, and then they may once

more listen to merrie tales told under the greenwood tree.

The boy who has been nurtured on tales of fancy and who trusts to things

to work out for the best of their own accord will generally fall into

ways of cheerfulness and contentment. He will play the game of life out

with more of heart and courage, and less of doubt and fear. He may be

something of an impractical dreamer, but he will be kind and true. He

will not aim to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but will aim

to make people happy rather than learned. His early experience of the

feelings of pity and terror will refine his emotions as much as it did

in the age of Thespias those of the Greek youth. In other words, his

early familiarity with fairy tales, whether learned by word of mouth

from his father, his nurse, or his teacher, will set his face in the

right direction. And to keep it so turned he will of necessity have to

build up a fairy library. What that library might contain and what he

should know as a perfect lesson must now be considered.

A sense of fitness rather than a feeling of loyalty to the language

points to the English fairy and household tales as the ones with which

to begin. If the teacher has a folk-lore curiosity and interest which

aid him in giving these fairy tales to the children, that is well and

good. But this historic view is by no means so important as it is to

know thoroughly the tales themselves and to enter into an appreciation

of them with a keen and boyish interest. The present concern is with a

limited number of stories that are so wholly good and so very necessary

to the child that he should come to know them completely. Then from this

beginning the boy can wander at his own sweet will and keep friends with

Jacobs, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, and, last of all and no doubt best of

all, "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments." But from all of these the

rude vigour, the dramatic directness, and above all the playful humour

of the English tales will first captivate him. They have not quite the

grace, simplicity, and elegance of the French tales, nor the more

fanciful and romantic touches of the German tales; yet, as Mr. Jacobs

has told us, "They have the quality of going home to English children.

The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a

cheerful smile and a steady gaze."

"English Fairy Tales" and "More English Fairy Tales" should be in the

hands of every child. The stories are told in a way that preserves all

of their dramatic interest and humour of phrase and situation. This

characteristic humour of English folk-fancy, Mr. Jacobs has skilfully

caught. He has this to say of his way of telling them: "I am inclined to

follow the traditions of my old nurse, who was not bred at Girton and

scorned at times the rules of Lindley Murray and the diction of polite

society. And I have left vulgarisms in the mouths of vulgar people.

Children appreciate the dramatic propriety of this as much as do their

elders. Generally speaking, it has been my ambition to write as a good

old nurse would speak when she tells Fairy Tales. I am doubtful of my

success in catching the colloquial-romantic tone appropriate for such

narratives, but they had to be done or else my object, to give a book of

English Fairy Tales which children would listen to, would have been

unachieved. This book is to be read aloud and not merely to be taken by

the eye." All children should rejoice, that, so long after Puritanism

had suppressed these tales in many parts of England, and after its

decline they had come to be supplanted by the Mother Goose tales of

Perrault, there has come such an excellent retelling of them in the

Jacobs books. If there be anything in fairy literature better than "Tom

Tit Tot," I have not found it. It is altogether fitting to have it stand

first in such a great collection. And with other such very good tales as

"Cap o' Rushes," "The Three Sillies," and "Jack and the Golden Snuff

Box," to say nothing of the dramatic telling of "Hop o' My Thumb," "Jack

the Giant Killer," and "Jack and the Bean Stalk," the pleasure from

reading the book at the right age will mayhap never be surpassed. One

might regret that the curious and helpful information of the notes had

not been reserved for a separate treatise for mature readers, did not

the amusing illustration of the court-crier by John D. Batton give the

warning that the tales are closed and children must not read any

further. After having learned some of the best stories through the ear,

the boy must certainly buy and keep these two books.

After the English tales are familiar, the boy might be given the Mother

Goose tales as first collected by Charles Perrault in 1696. They had

been current orally in France for many years before this, and they

undoubtedly had their origin in the oldest folk-lore of the world. It is

said Perrault wrote them down as he heard them with the intention of

writing them over in verse after the manner of the fables done by La

Fontaine. But his little son, to whom they had been told, rewrote them

from memory as an exercise, and the lad's version, being so simple and

direct, was given to the world in that form by his father. They slowly

found their way into England and for a while supplanted the native

tales. There is surely a universal appeal in such stories as "Little Red

Riding Hood," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots," and "Sleeping Beauty." The

best rendering of these to-day is a small volume by Charles Welsh,

entitled "The Tales of Mother Goose." It has none of the poetic justice

that refuses to have the wolf eat up Little Red Riding Hood. It would be

well for some publisher to reprint an edition issued in New York in 1795

under the title of "Tales of Passed Times, by Mother Goose." Some good

renderings of particular tales, however, may be found scattered through

collections of fairy stories that have appeared.

The temptation to say something about the famous "Cruikshank Fairy Book"

in which some of these Mother Goose tales appeared cannot be resisted at

this point. It is a very noticeable illustration of the inability of a

man of talent always to keep to his last. No artist has ever drawn such

superior pictures for children as did Cruikshank. Where can anything

better be found than Jack's descent on the harp, the Ogre's flight, or

the presentation of the boots to the King? Why then did not Cruikshank

make a picture book with pictures only? Why did he leave his last to

write the stories anew in order that he might take the opportunity to

give his own views and convictions on what he considered important

social and educational questions; or "to introduce a few temperance

truths with a fervent hope that some good may result therefrom"? The

notion that moralizing makes children good has spoiled many an artistic

horn and has never made a good educational spoon.

In Cruikshank's work in illustrating "Household and Fairy Tales" by the

brothers Grimm, we have a masterful production from the best period of

his genius, and we have it illustrating a superior text, the translation

made by Edward Taylor in 1823 and reprinted in 1868 with an introduction

by John Ruskin. Thackeray said that they had been the first real,

kindly, agreeable, and infinitely amusing and charming illustrations for

a child's book in England, and that they united beauty, fun, and fancy.

And who was a better judge of this than Thackeray? If it was not too

bold to say that "Tom Tit Tot" is the best household fairy story in the

language, it could be said with equal truth that Cruikshank's etching of

the two elves in "The Elves and the Shoemaker" is the best fairy

illustration yet done. These German stories are charming. The contention

that the stories are creepy is but the contention of a moralist. It

should carry no weight with the teacher who would give the boy artistic

notions of beauty, love, and mystery. These notions are always safer

than those of cold realism worked out in artificial conduct. Sir Walter

Scott wrote in this strain to Edward Taylor in 1832: "There is a sort of

wild fairy interest in them which makes me think them fully better

adapted to awaken the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than

the good boy stories which have in late years been composed for them. In

the latter case, their minds are, as it were, put into stocks, like

their feet at the dancing-school, and the moral always consists in good

moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth is, I would not

give one tear shed over Little Red Riding Hood for all the benefit to be

derived from a hundred histories of Johnny Goodchild. In a word, I think

the selfish tendencies will soon enough be acquired in this arithmetical

age; and that, to make the higher class of character, our wild

fictions--like our own simple music--will have more effect in awakening

the fancy and elevating the disposition than the colder and more

elaborate compositions of modern authors and composers." It is hoped the

pictures of Cruikshank and the translation of Taylor will soon appear in

a large and attractive volume.

When the dramatic colloquialism and humour of the English tales, the

superior grace, elegance, and beauty of the French tales, and the light,

airy fancy of the German tales have been presented to the boy, the

Scandinavian tales of Hans Christian Andersen will give him a refinement

in fairy life that he has not found before. They do not have, save in a

few such cases as "Holger the Dane," the quality of appealing to

grown-ups as well as to children--the test of a child's book that is

literature, or rather the test of a man yet on good terms with the

world. They are somewhat dull, wearisome, and overdone in places and do

not stop when the story is ended, as we find in "The Fir Tree"; yet in

some way they temper the English and German tales and meet Ruskin's

requirement that a child's tale should sometimes be both sweet and sad.

In fact, these stories are great favourites with many children, who

actually prefer "The Ugly Duckling" to "The Golden Bird." The boy might

early start with a few of the individual stories so delightfully

illustrated by Helen Stratton, and then when he can afford it buy the

excellent edition illustrated by the Danish artist, Hans Tegner, from

all of which he will get a new and pleasant touch of fairy life.

There yet remains one book, not always called a fairy book, that must be

read before the boy leaves the land of fancy and wonder. It was the

favourite volume of Stevenson, and small surprise is it to any one who

knows the book and knows of the man. Nor is it less surprising to think

that the Oriental scholar, Antoine Galland, who first gave these stories

to Europe two hundred years ago, would be called out of bed at night to

tell them to an eager crowd under his window, the crowd always begging

for just one story more. One might search in vain for a companion

volume to this most capital of all books, "The Arabian Nights'

Entertainments." The tales are on a bigger scale than are the English

and German tales. There is a vastness of desert and starry sky in the

tent life of the Arab that is unknown in the cottage life of the English

peasant. And this is reflected in the tale that is told. Immensity and

Oriental mystery have taken the place of colloquial directness and

humour, and we have almost pure romance. Their richness and splendour

captivate the reader and transport him into a wonderland of powerful

magicians and magnificent palaces. The book is elemental in its appeal

and will always furnish royal entertainment for man or boy. And the man

who is not too completely grown up will keep his Lane's translation

within arm's reach against the hours when the dull cares of the world

are weighing him down.

As fairy tales have a common plot in many languages, so has there been a

common way of preserving and transmitting them. This has been by oral

tradition. They were originally to be given by word of mouth, a method

that is yet best fitted to curious children. The teacher must give them

through the ear, if they are to be learned and retained. Whenever it is

possible in doing this, he must not forget to start with the pleasant

beginning, "once upon a time," nor yet to omit the best of all

conclusions, "and all went well ever afterwards"--neglecting, of

course, to add that truism for grown-ups, "that didn't go ill." In this

practice of giving a few choice tales through the ear is the preparation

for the time when a boy will eagerly thumb a favourite volume of his own

in some quiet nook. But a few of the better tales must first have been

mastered so that they can be told with dramatic directness. Here then

the same practice must hold that is followed in all reading: do not

overread. A few stories are to be well learned and a few books to be

owned, but only a few. If the boy once comes to feel his strength from a

limited number of good stories, the made-to-order story for the fellow

with the curls will never appeal to him. What he knows he will know and

be glad to know.

If it be presumption to select a limited list of stories by grades when

the world is so full of stories, it must be presumption. There are

stories that can have no substitutes until the world has had another

accumulated experience of some hundreds of years of fireside lore. The

list that follows has been found good for a limited list, yet as

complete a one as a child can master. No apology need be offered for the

insertion of Ruskin's great story or the two stories of jungle life by

Kipling. They are modern, but form a good bridge to modern books that

have real merit. A boy who will not read "Red Dog" with an interest on

fire had better grow weak on a Rollo book. His taste is surely to be

lamented. He will early fall in love and later fall into cynicism.

Here is the list for the first four or five grades to be given in about

the order in which they are written: "The Old Woman and Her Pig," "The

Three Little Pigs," and "Henny-Penny," all as told by Jacobs in "English

Fairy Tales"; "The Three Bears" as told by the poet Southey, where the

little old woman continues to play a part; "Little Red Riding Hood" in

which the wolf eats her up, "Cinderella; or, the Glass Slipper," and

"The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots" from "The Tales of Mother Goose" as

told by Charles Welsh; "Tom Tit Tot," "The History of Tom Thumb," "Jack

the Giant Killer," and "Whittington and His Cat" from "English Fairy

Tales"; "Beauty and the Beast" and "Hop o' My Thumb" from "The

Children's Book"; "Hansel and Grethel," "The Blue Light," and "The

Golden Bird" from Taylor's translation of the Grimm tales; "The Ugly

Duckling" and "The Fir Tree" from Andersen; "The Story of Aladdin; or,

the Wonderful Lamp," "The History of Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers

Killed by One Slave," and "The Story of Sinbad the Sailor" from "The

Arabian Nights' Entertainments"; "The King of the Golden River" by John

Ruskin; "Kaa's Hunting" and "Red Dog" from "The Jungle Books" of Rudyard

Kipling.

When these stories have been well learned through the ear, their

purpose as literature and as groundwork for narrative speech will have

been accomplished. Of course, the teacher must read many stories to his

class besides the ones named above; but he is not to require more than a

mere listening to the reading from a point of interest only. By and by

the boy will fall into the habit of reading aloud to some one else, and

this may now be trusted to carry him along. Wise suggestion on the part

of the teacher will direct him in getting a few good volumes that he can

call his own. A fairy library, not large but well selected, will become

a comfort to him in later years when the lamp is getting dim. For the

man who finds himself unable to read with pleasure a fairy tale that

charmed him in youth proclaims himself a slave either to relentless

materialism or to cold and dignified egotism. And if he be not

obstinately short-sighted, he cannot help seeing that the man who yet

loves a fairy tale is one who also fears God, is clear of head, and is

brave of heart.

In the succession of the seasons, the coming of spring puts young blood

into old veins much as it dresses the gray of winter in a lively green.

The possibilities of the daughter of Ceres while she dwells beneath the

earth are likewise to be found between the covers of a fairy library. A

man might travel many a long way in search of a better fountain of

youth.