Nothing so brings out the music and the structural beauty of poetry as reading it aloud, and many who have cared nothing for verse in any of its forms learn to love it when they hear it read frequently by a sympathetic voice. Children love the nursery rhymes largely because they have heard them and have caught the sound and rhythm more than the meaning. It is the lively music more than the whimsical meaning that has made the rhymes popular. When the time comes that children begin to lose their interest and consider poetry beneath them, their flagging attention often may be aroused and new interest created by simply reading new selections aloud to them and talking with them about the meaning and beauties of the poems.On page 410 of Volume One is Longfellow’s exquisite poem, The Reaper and the Flowers. We can imagine a little family group reading this some quiet evening when the lamp throws shadows into the corners and the bed-time hour draws near. No one could call the children in on a fine summer day, and, when fresh from their play, the blood is bounding through their veins, expect them to be touched by delicate sentiment, or to appreciate musical numbers. Literature has something for every hour, every mood, every circumstance. It may be that there is one little vacant chair in this family circle, or that from some neighbor’s family a child has gone. Fear clutches at the youthful hearts and Grief shudders behind each chair. Even the warm bed in the dark room is a dread, for we have so surrounded death with mystery and terror that even the young are aghast when it is mentioned. But our best-loved poet has a cheering message for every one, and into this little group the parent brings it. In soft and sympathetic voice he reads aloud, giving the slow and gentle music of the lines time to steal into the youthful hearts.

As he reads, he pauses now and then to speak to his little audience, watching ever not to be sharp in his questionings or anything but kindly in his comments. Something like the following might be the way he brings out the meaning:

“‘There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.’

“A Reaper—a man walking in the grain, cutting it as he goes. Not with a machine such as we see on the farm nowadays, but with a short curved blade which the poet calls a sickle. It is a keen blade the sickle has, and with every stroke ripened grain and all the little flowers that have grown up among it fall to the ground. But the poet means more. He thinks that the Reaper is Death, that the bearded grain is the men and women who have lived to a ripe old age and who are ready to die, ready for the rewards of a long and well-spent life. But alas, the flowers fall with the ripened grain: sometimes little children must die, although dearly would we like to keep them with us.

“Then the Reaper speaks: ‘Shall I have nothing fair and beautiful, must I have nothing but dry and bearded grain? I love these beautiful flowers; their fragrance is dear to me. Yet I will give them back again; some time you may see them again.’

“So Death looked at the little children with tears filling his kindly eyes. As they faded and drooped he kissed them gently and took them softly and sorrowfully into his arms. He was gathering these lovely innocents to take them to his Lord, where in Paradise they might be happy evermore, without any of the privations and sufferings that come to every one who grows up.

“As he wept, not for the little children, but for all who stay behind, he continued to speak smilingly through his tears to the sorrowing ones on earth:

“‘Christ needs these dear ones, these flowerets gay: to him they are tokens dear of the earth where once he played and sang on the hills of Judea. Can you not trust them to him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God?” Have no fear; I am but moving them into the bright heavenly mansions, where they shall rest safely in the bosoms of the saints and angels.’

“And the mother, who loved them so, gave up her darling ones, for she saw, even through her tears, how happy they must be in their new home.

“‘O not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;’

it was a young and beautiful Angel, not the hideous Death in black robes and hood scarce hiding his bony head, that

“‘visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.’

“Does Death seem so terrible now? Although we must always see the vacant chair and know that a loved one has gone forever, can we not realize that it is we who suffer, and not the one who has been taken from among us? Is it not selfish to grieve?”

Shall we fear Death any more? When the parent has read the poem once more from beginning to end in silence, except as the soft words fall from his lips, will not the hearers feel inspired to be better and nobler boys and girls, men and women? Will darkness have more fear for them? Will they not then go to their rooms and lie down peacefully to sleep?

There are other poems for other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a “joke”: a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the “joke” proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old joke, surely enough, and you have seen others like it; but it is funny still and perhaps a little caustic. Not all men whom the world calls good are good beneath the surface. Perhaps you know of cases in which “the Dog it was that died.”Another humorous poem to use in this connection is Echo (Volume III, page 286).

Between the two extremes mentioned above are selections for all moods and all kinds of people. The things to be remembered in reading with children are, that poetry must be understood to be appreciated; that it must be heard until the mind is trained to receive it through the eye instead of the ear; that it appeals to the feelings more than to the will; that it must be interpreted by the light of experience, and hence must be adapted to the age of the reader. A person would not read The Reaper and the Flowers at a dancing party, nor The Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog before a funeral.

Below are a few studies more complete and of different types.

The Brown Thrush

(Volume I, page 147)

We find great charm in this short lyric, for its form is unusual, its music joyous and its sentiment fine. Three lines of four feet each, a line of three feet, two lines of two feet each, and one line of three feet make up each stanza. The accent in each foot is on the last syllable, but some of the feet are only two syllables long. It’s a merry meter. It scarcely can be read without stirring a rollicking melody in the ears of the listener. That’s the art in the poem. The sentiment is as fine as the music. “The world’s running over with joy! I’m as happy as happy can be.” If the little brown thrush keeps singing that song the heart of everyone who hears it will overflow with joy. But it would be easy, very easy indeed, to stop the joyous song of the thrush by meddling with the five pretty eggs, and when the thrush changed his happy song to harsh notes of fear and reproach, the light of joy would fade from our day as quickly as from his.

The Child’s World

(Volume II, page 66)

The unique measures of this brief poem make a melodious whole that every child will appreciate. Unless some care is taken in reading it aloud, however, much of its beauty will be lost. This is particularly true of the first stanza, from the first and last lines of which a syllable has been omitted. The absence of these syllables must be indicated by pauses or by giving more time to the word “great” in the first line, and to the word “world” in the last line. The idea may be indicated by supposing that the word “O” has been omitted from the beginning of the first and last line. The first line of the last couplet is peculiar in that every one of the four feet contains three syllables with the accent on the last. All the other lines consist each of four feet of either two or three syllables. Technically the poem is anapestic tetrameter much varied by the introduction of iambic feet. (See the studies in meter, Volume VII, pages 2 and 13.)

The rhymes are all in couplets and are perfect. The stanzas, like paragraphs, indicate changes in thought. Its pleasing unity rests in the fact that it is all a child’s thoughts about the world. It is logical, a real leading up of thought to natural climax. The child begins with wonder and a sense of beauty around her. The world is great and wide and wonderful and beautiful. She thinks of the sea she has read about or seen and thinks of the wonderful water curling up in waves above the shore. To her the world is the land with the wonderful growing grass upon its broad breast, and this marks the end of her first thought—the great world is beautifully dressed.

Next as she sits on the brow of the hill and gazes over the lowland the breezes blow her hair about her face and her mind passes to the wonderful air that as wind shakes the trees, ripples the water, whirls the mills and sings through the trees on the tops of the hills.

Thought wanders on to the nodding wheat, the rivers, cliffs, and islands, to the cities and the people everywhere for thousands of miles. What is the effect of this vastness on the thought of a child? Can you not realize for yourself any clear night that you may gaze at the numberless stars in the arching skies? How small, how infinitely little are we in all the great universe! Have we the imagination to grasp the saving thought that comes so naturally into the clear mind of the child? Though I am so small, so insignificant, I can think and love, but the wonderful earth can not. A philosophy well worth keeping, is it not?

(Volume II, page 119)

Jean Ingelow’s poem has in it many things to interest a child, but there may be some things that will be clearer for explanation.

Stanza 1. In England the daisy grows wild almost everywhere, a little, low plant which produces its heads of white, pink-tipped flowers from a rosette of leaves. In the United States we often see daisies in cultivation but they are nowhere native. The child is at her seventh birthday and has learned her multiplication table, the “sevens”. Nowadays in our schools the children do not have the drudgery of committing the long tables to memory as their grand-parents did. Our little friend thinks that as she has lived seven years that makes her “seven times one are seven.”

Stanza 2. One is so old at seven, so very old—why one can even write a letter. But now with the birthday lessons learned she can think of other things; for instance there are the lambs who play always, for they have no lessons to learn. They are not old and they are “only one times one,” not “seven times one,” which are seven.

Stanza 3. She has seen the moon when it was full and bright and gave a wondrous light, but now it is only a pale crescent in the sky and its light is failing. Certainly the moon is failing and not like the child improving each day.

Stanza 4. Occasionally the child has done wrong and been punished, and perhaps the moon has done something wrong way up there in heaven so that God has hidden its face. If that is true she hopes soon God will forgive the poor moon and allow it to shine once more with its silver light.

Stanza 5. Isn’t “velvet bee” a happy expression? Then the bee gathers the yellow pollen from the flowers, mixes and shapes it into little pellets and fastens them in golden balls on its thighs to carry into the hive where it will serve as “bee bread” to feed the young bees. In the wet places grow the marsh marigolds, or cowslips as they are sometimes called, bright golden flowers like the buttercups. To the bee and the cowslips the little child joyfully cries: “Give me your golden honey to hold, for I am seven years old and know what to do with it.”

Stanza 6. The columbine is the graceful little flower we so often hear called honeysuckle. Five deep curved nectar-bearing tubes project backward from the flower itself. By opening the blossom in the right way the child of fanciful ideas may see shapes that remind her of turtle doves.

The cuckoo-pint (by the way, the i is short as in pit) does not grow in the United States. It has spotted leaves, large and triangular, and the “bell” is an upright green cup in which stands a tall column, the “clapper.” It is called cuckoo-pint because it blossoms about the time the cuckoo returns to England. Our nearest approach to the flower is the “Jack-in-the-Pulpit” or Indian Turnip.

It is perfectly safe for the columbine to unfold its wrapper and the cuckoo-pint to toll its bell in the presence of a maiden so old. She will not destroy them.

Stanza 7. In the United States we have no wild linnet, though we sometimes hear song-birds called by that name. The English linnet is a little sparrow with striped back and a purple crown and breast. He resembles our purple finch and our redpoll. He is one of the famous songsters of the English lanes and fields.

No young lady of seven would be so thoughtless as to steal away the young linnets, so the old bird may freely point out the nest.At what time of the year does the little girl’s birthday come?

The First Snowfall

(Volume II, page 403)

A. The Author. For a sketch of the life of James Russell Lowell, see Volume VII, page 411.

B. The Meaning. Words and Phrases:

“Gloaming”; early evening.

“Silence.” The snow is called a silence, because it hushes noise, or prevents it.

“Pine and fir and hemlock”; three evergreen trees.

“Ermine”; the fur from a northern animal of the same name. It is very soft and white. Earls, nobles of rank, wore ermine on their robes to show their high birth.

“Pearl”; a white, lustrous jewel, or the beautiful lining of some sea shells.

“Carrara”; a town in Italy, whence comes the finest white marble. Here Carrara means costly marble.

“Swan’s down.” Swans have fine soft down between their feathers. It protects them from cold in winter, and in summer they line their nests with it.

“Noiseless work”; covering everything with snow.

“Mound”; grave.

“Auburn”; a beautiful cemetery near Boston.

“Babes in the Wood”; an allusion to the old story of the children who were lost in the woods, and whom the robins covered with leaves to protect them.“All-father”; God, the Father of all.

“Leaden”; gray and heavy, lead-colored.

“Arched”; curved.

“Deep-plunged woe”; a sorrow that plunged us deep in misery.

“Eyes that saw not.” His eyes were so filled with tears that he could not see “Mabel,” who is really his daughter Rose.

“My kiss was given to her sister.” He was thinking so deeply of his lost daughter, that it seemed almost as though he kissed the dead lips.

“Folded close.” The soft, downy snow made him think of a soft, warm covering for the form of his little one.

C. Form and Structure.

There are ten stanzas of four verses (lines) each, with the rhymes at the ends of the second and fourth verses only. The word snow is used four times in rhymes; the words rhyming with it are crow, below, woe and know. All the rhymes in the poem are perfect.

The meter is varied iambic trimeter. The first and third lines of each stanza have an added unaccented syllable, while the second and fourth have just three full feet. Anapestic feet are used freely to improve the music; in fact, they are nearly as numerous as the iambic feet.

The scansion of the first stanza may be indicated thus:

The-snow´"had-be-gun´"in-the-gloam´"ing
And-bus´"i-ly-all´"the-night´
Had-been-heap´"ing-field´"and-high´"way
With-a-si´"lence-deep´"and-white´The scansion of the sixth stanza may be shown as follows:

Up-spoke´"our-own´"lit-tle-Ma´"bel
Say-ing-Fa´"ther-who-makes´"it-snow´
And-I-told´of-the-good´"All-Fa´"ther
Who cares´"for-us-here´"be-low´

They are musical stanzas, and the finely chosen words add much to the melody.

D. Sentiment. Lowell had a little daughter, Blanche, who died shortly before this poem was composed, so we may be sure that it was written from a full heart. He begins by giving us one of the most beautiful pictures of a snow-storm and of a snow-covered world that was ever written.

(Compare Lowell’s other description of winter to be found in the second part of The Vision of Sir Launfal and Whittier’s description in Snow-Bound.)

When he has made us feel the softness, gentleness and beauty of the snow and caused us to forget that it is cold and damp, he speaks of himself. We can see him sitting by the window looking out upon the beautiful pearl-clad world. He brings us right into his own presence and we can almost see the flocks of startled brown snowbirds whirling by. Not till now, when we are fully in sympathy with him, does he let us know that he has met with a deep, heart-breaking loss. Now we know what the soft flakes are hiding from sight, and our hearts go out with his.

Then his innocent little daughter comes in with the simple, commonplace question which he answers so touchingly. Can you not see him with his arm around the child, telling her of the care of the Father who loves little children so dearly? Yet his mind cannot free itself wholly from his first great sorrow, though he remembers that calmness, resignation, and gentle patience fell over his heart as the soft snow falls flake by flake from the leaden sky.

To the child, however, he speaks words that she will not fully understand until she, too, is grown and has met with sorrow: “It is only the merciful Father, darling, who can make fall that gentle comfort that heals and hides all suffering.”

Once more our hearts are wrung with sympathy when with tear-filled eyes he gives the little maiden by his side the kiss that was for the silent lips in sweet Auburn. The little one, kissing back, could not know the grief of her father’s heart or realize that another form than hers was clasped in his embrace.

How much better we know the great poet when he tells us his personal griefs in so touching a manner! How sweet is the lesson of patience and resignation when communicated in such a beautiful poem!

E. Beauty and Effectiveness in Phrasing. Where in literature will you find more beautiful phrases, more effective figures, than abound in this poem? Notice particularly the following, and try to determine why each is remarkable:

“With a silence deep and white.”

“Ermine too dear for an earl.”

“Stiff rails softened to swan’s down.”

“The noiseless work of the sky.”

“the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow.”

“The scar of our deep-plunged woe.”

“Folded close in deepening snow.”

F. Conclusion. The First Snowfall is one of the most perfect poems in our language. In beauty of composition, of music, of sentiment, and in deep religious feeling it can scarcely be excelled. Be guarded how you teach it; treat it reverently. Try to cause the children to love it, to wish to memorize it. If you see that you are not securing these results, leave the poem and take up something else. It is almost a sin to spoil it for any person.

The Potato

(Volume II, page 467)

Thomas Moore’s amusing stanza may seem silly to some people, but those who have a sense of humor will be delighted with the whimsical conception of a potato with so independent a spirit. It usually spoils humor to comment upon it. To explain a joke is to kill it. The sense of humor is contagious. Children will laugh when older people smile just from sympathy. When they ask “what’s the joke?” it is time to explain. Even then it is best to give merely facts and let the joke make its own way. Laughter lightens many a heavy burden, and a sense of humor is a saving grace. Cultivate it by indirection.

Origin of the Opal

(Volume II, page 480)

The opal is a beautiful stone which seen at different angles and in different lights seems to glow with various colors. The polished surface may seem, as you first look at it, to be only a milky white. Turn it a little and it glows a bright flame color with green lights round the margin. Turned a little more it shows violet and silver. Other shades mingle with these, all coming and going as light and position vary. A fine opal is a wonderfully brilliant precious stone.

The idea of the poem, too, is beautiful. Here is a transparent dewdrop; in it is the flame of the last ray of sun. As the drop lies in the violet it takes that color, and steals from the rose her delicate shades. From the sky it draws the blue, from a leaf its green and silver. When all these colors have been taken in, the drop is congealed, and imprisoned in its heart are the fiery flame, the rich violet, the rose tints, the skyey blue, the delicate green and the gleaming silver. This is the opal.

The Barefoot Boy

(Volume IV, page 3)

On page 5 occur the lines,

“Mine, on bended orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!”

According to the old Greeks, there lay far to the west, in the ocean, a wonderful island where were kept, under the guard of a gruesome dragon, the beautiful golden apples which Gaea gave as a wedding present to Zeus. The Hesperides were the three daughters of Night, who ruled the guardian dragon. These golden apples, then, came to be known as the apples of Hesperides. When Hercules in his madness had slain his three children he was condemned to do whatever his cousin Eurystheus demanded for his purification. His tasks came to be known as the Twelve Labors of Hercules, and the eleventh was to obtain the golden apples from the Hesperides. He accomplished this task among the others, but the apples were subsequently restored. To the barefoot boy the apples of his New England tree were as choice as the golden ones of the Greek myth.

Do not fail to see the exquisite picture painted by these beautiful descriptive lines on pages 5 and 6.

“O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swing fold.”

The Bugle Song

(Volume VI, page 133)

Among the many charming lyrics which Tennyson has written, there are few more musical or more delicately beautiful than The Bugle Song. It may be appreciated better perhaps if we have knowledge of its setting. It occurs in The Princess, and has no immediate connection with anything that precedes or follows.

Three pairs of youthful lovers have been climbing above a lovely glade wherein is pitched the tent of the Princess. As they climbed, “Many a little hand glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, and many a light foot shone like a jewel set in the dark crag.” They wound about the cliffs, and out and in among the copses, striking off pieces of various rocks and chattering over their stony names, until they reached the summit and the sun grew broader as he set and threw his rosy light upon the heights above the glade. When in this poetic vein Tennyson has described the scene, he throws in The Bugle Song without any comment.

We will understand it better if we paraphrase it briefly. Let us imagine ourselves standing on some peak and looking over a scene lighted by the setting sun.

“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story.”

The light in long quivering beams is thrown across the lakes, and a wild cataract, made glorious by the golden light, leaps down a neighboring precipice. At this moment, somewhere in the distance we hear a bugle which sets wild echoes flying in every direction about us. As these echoes die away,

“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going,”

there comes reflected to us from cliff and abrupt promontory the faint sound of the little horns of Fairyland. To them the purple glens reply in echoes gently dying into silence. O love, those echoes die away in the rich sky, and faint into nothingness on hill and field and river; but echoes of our thoughts, our feelings, of ourselves, roll on from one soul to another and grow in power forever and forever.

The music in the lyric is dependent upon the choice of words and the arrangement of words. The words are chosen because of their meaning and because of the sounds which compose them. They are so arranged that the sequence is melodious and that the accents fall where needed to perfect the meter. The first three lines are perfectly smooth and regular, but the fourth is an abrupt change; “And the wild cataract leaps in glory” suggests power and strong interrupted motion. The last two lines of the stanza are somewhat irregular in meter, and the double repetition of the last word suggests the time elapsing while the echoes are flying back and forth between the surrounding cliffs, growing fainter and fainter with each repetition. In reading we show this: “Blow, bugle,” is the original sound; we pause for the echoes to answer, “dying, dying, dying.”

In the second stanza the poet has selected words in which the vowels have thin and delicate sounds:

“how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!”

So soft are the echoes that they suggest to the poet the delicate refrain from the musical instruments of fairies, and he describes it in the poetic phrase,

“The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!”

The meter of the last stanza, which is more irregular than the others, we can indicate as follows:

O love´"they die´"in yon´"rich sky´
They faint´"on hill´"or field´"or riv´"er:
Our ech´"oes roll´"from soul´"to soul´,
And grow´"for ev´"er and´"for ev´"er
Blow, bu´"gle, blow´"—set´"the wild ech´"oes fly´"ing,
And an´"swer, ech´"oes, an´"swer, dy´"ing, dy´"ing, dy´"ing.

In the next to the last line there are five feet and one added syllable, if we consider that the pause which we naturally make before the word set is equivalent to a syllable. In the last line there are six feet with an added syllable. This additional foot which appears in the last line of every stanza is introduced to imitate the lingering death of the echoes.

After this study of the poem it should be read several times aloud in an effort to bring out the music; the first stanza in the pitch of ordinary conversation, with force in the fourth line and lingering intonations in the last line. The pitch of the second stanza should be higher, and it will be easily attained because of the predominance of the thin vowels. The third stanza calls for a pitch lower than the first and a slowness and solemnity of movement quite in contrast to the moderate rate of the first and the liveliness and gaiety of the second. It will be seen in these readings that there is an overlying melody in the stanzas, quite distinct from the rhythm that depends upon the meter, and that in the reading the meter naturally falls subservient to the melody of the phrases. In fact, in a poem of this kind the meter should be forgotten in the reading, which should give itself wholly to bringing out the meaning expressively, and to making the voice harmonize with the rich music of the lines.

An analysis of The Bugle Song will seem superfluous to the cultivated reader, but if these suggestions help the learner to see something new, to feel more acutely, to realize beauty more abundantly, their purpose is accomplished.

The Petrified Fern

(Volume VII, page 77)

Some day when you want an interesting and delightful nature lesson that is a little out of the ordinary, get, if you can, a fossil fern. If you are in the city, doubtless you can get one from the museum, or, better yet, you may find that among your pupils there is someone who has such a specimen carefully treasured away. In some localities where the limestone rock comes to the surface, especially in the coal measures, these petrified ferns are very numerous. Show this to the class and get them all interested in it.

If you cannot get a specimen to use, you can find a picture in the encyclopedia or geology, or you can tell the pupils how in some places it is possible to pick up from among the rocks on the surface of the ground oblong pieces perhaps a half inch thick, in which, when they are split open, you can see the impression of a fern, every vein showing plainly and looking as clear in the dull gray as it showed when alive in its green dress.

Tell the story of the fern something after this fashion:

“Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, so many years, in fact, that none of us can tell how many, somewhere in a valley, there grew a beautiful little fern, green and slender. It was as tender and delicate as the ones you can find in the woods now, and grew in just such a shady place. When the breezes crept down under the trees they waved the fern gracefully about so that it gently touched the tall rushes that grew above it and cast little shadows on the moss at its feet. Now and then a playful sunbeam darted through the crevices in the leaves and found the fern, and at night drops of dew stole silently in and made a glistening crown upon its head. But there were no children then to find it. It was long, long ago, when the earth was young, and nowhere on its broad surface was a single human child.

“Out in the silent sea fishes larger than any that can be found now were swimming about. Across the plains of the earth animals of wonderful shapes and enormous size stalked clumsily and found their way into stately forests. No man ever saw growing such trees as waved their giant branches over the earth, for then Nature made things on a grander scale than she does now. The little fern, however, was wild and simple, and lived in its home unnoticed and uncared for by any of the great creatures or the mighty trees. Still it grew on modestly in its own sweet way, spreading its fronds and becoming more beautiful every day.

“Then suddenly one day the earth heaved up its mighty rocks and threw them about in every direction. The strong currents of the ocean broke loose and flooded over the land. They drowned the animals, moved the plain, tore down the haughty woods and cast the great trunks about like straw. They broke the little fern from its slender stalk, and burying it deep in soft moist clay, hid it safely away.

“Many, many long centuries have passed since the day the useless little fern was lost. Millions of human beings have come upon the earth, have lived and been happy, have suffered, passed away, and have been forgotten. The soft, moist clay that clasped the fern hardened into rock and kept safely in its strong prison the delicate little frond.

“Then one day, not long ago, a thoughtful man studying Nature’s secrets far and wide found up in a valley where a stream had worn a deep fissure, a queer little rock. When he looked at it, he saw running over it a strange design, as though some fairy with its magic pencil had drawn the outline of a fern with every vein distinct, showing in every line the life of the long-lost plant. It was the fern I told you about.

“Isn’t it strange that so delicate a thing as a fern could be kept clear and fine through all those thousands of years when the earth was changing and growing, and then finally be thrown up where a man could find it and read its whole history? The poet, Mary Bolles Branch, saw the little fern and wrote the beautiful lines which I now want to read to you.”

(Here read the poem, The Petrified Fern, found in Journeys, Volume VII, page 77.)

There are very few words or expressions in the poem that will require any explanation. At the end of the first stanza the phrase “keeping holiday” means that as there were no human beings on the earth, there was no real work being done.

At the end of the first line in the second stanza the word main is an old term that means ocean.

The last two lines of the third stanza are meant to show how different life has been on the planet since man came. Until he appeared there was no real agony; there was pain, for animals can suffer, but it takes a mind and soul to know agony. Man cannot live except with suffering and at a bitter cost.

Until the last two lines of the fourth stanza are reached the poem is merely a beautiful and musical narrative. The last two lines are the thought that comes to the poet when she considers the history of the little fern. It is thinking such thoughts as this that make the poet different from ordinary men. You and I might see the impression of the fern and think it beautiful, but its beauty would not suggest to us the comforting idea that

* * * “God hides some souls away
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.”

Our own poet Longfellow, in The Builders, voices a similar thought when he says:

“Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”

After you have presented these thoughts, read the poem again to the children. Call attention to its musical structure, its simplicity, the beauty of its expressions, and then read it a third time. It is one of those beautiful things which may well be committed to memory.

It will be found very helpful, too, for the children to write the story in prose and try to bring out the meaning. Let them use freely the words of the poem, but a different arrangement of words, so that there shall be left no trace of rhyme or meter in their prose.

The Forsaken Merman

(Volume VII, page 180)

One of the satisfactory poems for study in the middle years of school life is the one whose name heads this paragraph. It is a great favorite with most children who know it, but it has not found its way largely into school use. For both of these reasons it is worthy of study.

I. Preparation and General Plan. Let the children read in turn, each taking one stanza, and if a second reading seems desirable let them exchange stanzas so that each will have a part new to himself. Be sure to have a final reading, by yourself or by the best reader among the children, which shall be continuous and without interruption; otherwise the beautiful unity of idea and the relation of the different parts will be overlooked.

II. Words and Phrases and Sentences. It is well to begin with the study sentence by sentence. See that the meaning is clear. The following suggestions may be of assistance:

Page 180, line 6. “Wild white horses”; the breakers, where the waves are beaten into foam and flying spray.

Line 7. “Champ”; gnash their bits.

Page 182, line 4. “Stream.” The ocean currents resemble streams of water on land.

Line 8. “Mail”; scales. How could the snakes dry their mail?

Line 10. “Unshut.” Do fish have eyelids? Is a whale a fish? Does a whale have eyelids? Do most people think of a whale as a fish?

Line 18. “Sate” is an old form for “sat.” Can you find other old or unusual words or expressions? Why does the poet use them?

Line 25. “Merman.” The literature of the ancients contained frequent allusions to mermaids, who were strange creatures with heads of beautiful, long-haired maidens, but with scaly bodies and the tails of fish. In pictures they are usually represented as sitting upon reefs holding a mirror in one hand and combing their long locks with the other. Holmes, in The Chambered Nautilus, speaks of the “cold sea-maids” who “rise to sun their streaming hair.” Mermen were not so often spoken of, but there are some allusions to them. In later times the mermaids were considered more as fairies, and there were many stories of human children being taken to live with the mermaids, and of the latter coming upon land to live like men and women. There was, too, a belief that sea-folk had no souls, and that a person who went to live with them would lose his soul. The beautiful picture on page 181 shows the forsaken family.

Line 10, from the bottom. “Leaded panes.” The small panes of stained glass in the church windows are set in narrow leaden frames.

Page 185, line 4. “Heaths” and “broom”. The English and Scotch heathers are little bushy shrubs that cover the hills and fields. They bear beautiful little bell-like pink or white flowers. The trailing arbutus, the blueberry and the wintergreen are some of our native plants belonging to the same family. The broom plant is another low shrub that bears rather large yellow blossoms, shaped like the flowers of peas and beans. The old-time country-folk used bundles of these shrubs for brooms.Line 10. There have been several allusions to tides. If the children do not understand the subject, be sure to explain how different a shore looks at high and at low tide. The change is most noticeable where the water is shallow, for then long stretches of sea-bottom may be uncovered at low tide.

III. The Story. Bring out by questions these facts which constitute the “plot,” or incidents:

1. A merman, who has a family of children (five, the artist says, page 181), has been deserted by his human wife.

2. The father and children are on shore trying to persuade the mother to return. The father feels that all must go back.

3. He begs the children to call their mother once more, for he thinks that childish voices, wild with pain, may induce her to come.

4. He feels discouraged.

5. He tells how she became alarmed and left them at Easter time to return to her church and pray, that she might save the soul she feared she was losing.

6. The father and children had come on shore to find their mother. She was seen praying in the church, working at her spinning wheel at home, happy but apparently not wholly forgetful of her family in the sea, for she sighed and dropped a tear as she looked over the sand to the sea.

7. The father feels that his wife is cruel and faithless and that she has deserted, forever, himself and his family, the kings of the sea.

IV. The Characters. Question the children till they see clearly the persons.1. The principal character is the deserted merman, a king of the sea. Ought he to expect his wife to stay with him?

2. The wife, a human being who has loved a merman, and who has a family of sea children, but who has suddenly become awakened to the danger to her soul. Is she selfish? Ought she to have forsaken her family? Can she really be happy away from her husband and family?

3. The children. How many were there? How old were they? Were there both boys and girls? Do you think Mr. Reese had a clear idea of the family when he drew the picture (page 181)? There must have been at least three, for it is said that the mother tended the youngest well; at least one girl, for the mother sighed for the strange eyes of a little mermaiden.

4. The priest.

V. Pictures. Two series of pictures are kept side by side all the time; one of the land, and the other of the sea. Try to create a vivid scene from each.

First, on land: We can see a little town, nestling on the side of a bleak, wind-swept hill, an old English town with a white stone wall all around it. On the hill, which is too rough to be cultivated, grow great fields of heather, studded with the golden blossoms of broom-plant. A little gray stone church stands surrounded by its yard, where the village dead are buried, for such was the old custom in England. The stones are at the head of the graves, and the walls of the church are rain- and storm-worn, but bright stained-glass windows in the building and flowers and trees among the graves make the place very beautiful. Some of the windows are clear, so that you can look through and gaze along the aisle bordered by high wooden pews and see the priest reading service, and, by one of the stone pillars, the merman’s wife, her eyes steadily gazing at the bible in her lap. You are privileged, too, to peep into one of the thatched cottages, and see the mother turning the old-fashioned spinning wheel. From her house there is a wide view down the hill, across the bay and out to sea. At high tide the breakers dash madly against the shore, but at low tide there is a broad strip of silver sand, rocks covered with sea-weed, and in the low places, creeks and pools of salt water. Does the artist’s picture represent high or low tide?

Second, at sea: Deep beneath the surface of the water where the waves toss and roar, where the surf and spray dash madly about, are great caverns strewn with white sand. It is cool down there in the depths, and the light filtering through the clear green sea is weak and pale. The water streams through caverns, swaying the exquisite sea-weeds that line the walls; and outside, round about, whales, sea-snakes and all manner of water beasts swim in play or struggle for mastery. In one of the caverns stands a great throne of red gold, ornamented with graceful sea fringe, pearls and amber. From without one may gaze up to the amber-colored ceiling, or down to the pavement of lustrous pearl. It was this wondrous palace that the mermaid abandoned for the sake of her soul.

VI. Sentiment. It is, on the whole, a sad poem, though a few cheering thoughts are suggested by it. Without an attempt at classification and analysis, here are a few choice ideas taken in order as they occur:

Page 180. “Children’s voices should be dear to a mother’s ear.”

Page 183. “Long prayers in the world they say.”

Page 183. “Oh joy, for the blessed light of the sun!”

Page 185. The last stanza shows very pleasingly the faithfulness of father and children, in contrast to the inconstancy of the mother.

VII. Beauty. Besides its sentiment, the poem gives us other beauties in great number. Here are some of them:

a. Unity. The poem has one idea running through it from beginning to end, an idea that is nowhere lacking, though at first it is not seen. What is the one idea? Grief, but not bitterness nor anger. Each succeeding stanza is seen to add something to this idea, till all our sympathies are enlisted for the forsaken children, more than for the father who does all the talking.

b. Meter and Rhyme. Both meter and rhyme are irregular, but that fact gives a pleasing variety to the poem and corresponds to the somewhat abrupt changes in the line of thought that at first make the poem rather hard to read. The children will be interested in comparing the lengths of lines in different stanzas and sometimes in different parts of the same stanza. It is easy to pick out the rhymes, to see how often rhymes are repeated in a stanza, and whether the lines are in couples or alternate.

c. Phrases. The following lines are quoted as those perhaps best worth study and remembrance. Let the children determine why they were selected as beautiful lines; that is, determine in what respect the lines are beautiful:

“Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.”

“The far-off sound of a silver bell.”

“Where the sea snakes toil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine.”

“A long, long sigh
For the cold, strange eyes of a little Mermaiden.”

“A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.”

“Heaths starr’d with broom.”

The Cloud

(Volume VII, page 257)

This lyric has wonderful beauty. It is one of the most musical of poems, the ideas are fine and the pictures of surpassing charm. If it lacks the high message it is still an inspiration, for beauty is always ennobling to the appreciative.

The charm of The Cloud will appeal to children but it may be intensified by judicious questioning and comment. As always in trying to give appreciation of real literature, the teacher in the home or at the school must be certain of his purpose and must never carry the instruction too far. He must understand the nature of the reader and shape his questions accordingly. It is impossible to print anything that will be helpful equally to all or that can be used in its entirety in any instance. Do not talk too much about what is evident, and stop at the first signs of a dawning distaste.First Stanza. It is the cloud that is speaking, and as every cloud is ever changing, the song of the cloud varies with its condition. It is now the cloud of the warm summer shower that piles up in snowy billows on the horizon and rolls over the laughing face of flowering nature.

How do the flowers show that they are thirsting? Will they look different when their thirst is satisfied? Do leaves dream? Leaves, you know, are the lungs of plants. May they do more work in the morning, the evening and the night, than at midday? May they be said to be sleeping at times? Is the shade of the cloud a help to the leaves? Did you ever see the leaves of trees turn their glazed upper surfaces toward the ground and twist up their under sides toward the sky, begging for moisture? Did you ever notice that the buds of most flowers open in the night or toward morning? Do the “dews awaken” these? Do clouds cause dews?

Strictly speaking, no “dews” fall from clouds; but light mist may do so. Who is the mother of the buds? In what way are they “rocked to rest”? How does the mother “dance about the sun”? Do you like the sound of the line, “I wield the flail of the lashing hail”? There are five “l’s” in the line and they give it that liquid sound which you like. Did you ever see a farmer standing in the midst of a floor covered with stalks of grain, beating out the kernels with a flail? What does the word “under” mean here? (An adverb, and means down or into subjection.) What does “it” refer to, in the next to the last line?

Second stanza. Who is the pilot of the cloud? Where does he sit? What lures the pilot? Who are the “genii”? (A genius—plural, genii—is a good or evil spirit which was supposed by the ancients to guard a man and control his destinies. In a sense the spirit of the waters may be said to control the lightning.) Who move “in the depths of the purple sea”? (The word “dream” would be written “dreams” in prose. The two lines mean: “Wherever the lightning thinks the spirit he loves is to be found.”) Who is dissolving in rains? Is there much lightning while the rain is falling or does it usually precede or follow the heaviest part of the shower?

Third Stanza. “Sanguine” means “blood red”; “rack” or “wrack” is broken or floating cloud. What is the “morning star”? What is meant by its “shining dead”? What are the “burning plumes” and what the “meteor eyes” of the sunrise? What becomes of broken clouds when the sun strikes them? What is likened to an eagle that is “alit” on a crag? What is the “airy nest” of the cloud? What is a “brooding” dove? Is a dove more quiet than other birds? Did you ever see a cloud high in the sky at early dawn, at sunset, in the night? Does this stanza make you think of what you have seen, make you see it again more vividly?

Fourth Stanza. “Orbed” means “round” like the moon. The woof is the thread that in weaving is carried by the shuttle through the threads of the “warp”—here it means the “filling.” The ancients considered Diana, goddess of the moon and of hunting, to be a beautiful girl, haughty and modest. In pictures she was clothed as a huntress, carried a bow and arrows and wore a crescent in her hair. Is the moon’s light white? Is that phrase a beautiful one which speaks of the moon as “with white fire laden”? What is the position of the cloud in this stanza? Is it between the moon and the earth? Is the cloud the “fleece-like floor” of the sky? If so, when the cloud speaks of its “tent’s thin roof,” what is meant? (Perhaps when the moon looks down the cloud looks like a floor and when the earth looks up it sees the cloud like a tent.) Whose are the “unseen feet”? At what do the stars “peer”? What do they see first? Why do they “turn and flee like a swarm of golden bees”? What do the stars see when the rent is widened? With what are the rivers, lakes and seas paved? How can they be paved with moon and stars? Did you ever see the moon and stars reflected in a lake, the former perhaps making a broad glittering pavement across the waters? To what does “these” in the last line refer? Why did not Shelley write “stars” instead of “these”? Can you see the exquisite night pictures described in these lines?

Fifth Stanza. This stanza is characterized by force and intensity of action; the words and phrases are as apt and beautiful as can be written.

Have you not seen the west when the clouds appeared a fiery red around the setting sun? Have you not seen the moon surrounded by bright pearly clouds? When the winds blow strong and whirl the fleecy clouds through the sky do not the latter make the mountain tops dim and do not the stars seem to dash across the heavens in a maddening race? Ever changing, the clouds constantly rearrange themselves, sometimes bridging the entire heavens, resting at the horizon upon the mountains as upon columns.What is the “triumphal arch”? What are the powers of the air? What is meant by saying they are “chained to the chair” of the cloud? Is the “triumphal arch” the “million-colored bow”? What is the “bow” that is said to be “million-colored”? What wove the soft colors of the million-colored bow? What is the “sphere fire”? What did it do? Whose soft colors did it weave? What was the earth doing while the colors were being woven? Why should the earth be laughing? Why is it spoken of as the moist earth?

Sixth Stanza. A cenotaph in an empty ornamental tomb. The body of the person to whom the monument has been erected is buried elsewhere.

In what way is a cloud the daughter of the earth and water? In what way is it the nurseling of the sky? How can a cloud pass through the pores of the ocean and shores? What are the pores of the ocean and shores? Is it true that a cloud cannot die? Is the poet true to nature and science when he says:

“For after the rain, when, with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
Build up the dome of the air”?

What is the “cenotaph” of the cloud? Out of what does the cloud rise again? What is there appropriate in saying that the cloud rises like a ghost? What is it the cloud builds up again?

Note the following particularly beautiful phrases:

“Leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.”

“Great pines groan aghast.”

“The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes.”

“The crimson pall of eve.”

“The woof of my tent’s thin roof.”

“My wind-built tent.”

“The million-colored bow.”

“Nurseling of the sky.”

“With never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare.”

Read aloud the entire lyric till its sweet music is yours. Note the smooth rhythm, the peculiar adaptation of sound to sense, the flowing cadences in the lines.

Ode to a Skylark

(Volume VII, page 275)

There are three classes of lyrics that are to a greater or less degree in the nature of an address to some person, place or thing. The elegy is a lyric address praising the dead, the ode and the sonnet may praise living or dead. The elegy in its measures partakes of the solemnity of the grave, the ode is hampered by no such restrictions. Neither is the sonnet, although by its strict requirements of form it is set off in a class by itself. In the ode the poet enjoys his greatest freedom, for he may use any meter, may write at any length and in any manner, grave, gay or grotesque. Accordingly the odes of our language are most spontaneous, musical, inspiring and beautiful.

The Skylark is a perfect example of an ode at its best. It is full of life and joy. It sparkles in every line and vies in music with the song of the lark himself.

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!—
Bird thou never wert.”—

Those two lines are to be taken as the key note of the whole lyric. It is the spirit of free and perfect melody that Shelley is addressing, melody that comes from heaven or near it, that bubbles from the full heart, that is free from rules and conventions, unpremeditated, yet all art. It is “Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.” “What thou art we know not,” yet thou art like a poet hidden singing hymns unbidden; like a high-born maiden soothing her love-laden soul in secret; like a hidden glowworm scattering its hues unbeholden; like a rose embowered in its leaves making faint the thieving winds with its heavy scent. Its music surpasses the delicate sounds of vernal showers on the twinkling grass, the beauty of the rain-awakened flowers, and all that ever was clear and fresh and joyous. Such is the song.

“What are the thoughts that inspire such heavenly melody?” the poet cries. “Teach us, teach us thy sweet thoughts. I have never heard such a flood of rapture so divine. Matched with thy music the noblest marriage hymn, the grandest Te Deum would be but an empty boast. From what fountains springs thy happy strain? Is it from fields, or waves or mountains, from strange shapes of the sky and plain? Is it from ignorance of pain, from love of thine own kind that the joyous music comes? Certainly thou lovest, but there can be no weariness in thy keen joy, no shadow of annoyance. How different we!

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

“Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.”

“To me, the poet, thy skill would be better than all the measures of delightful sound, than all the treasures found in books and if I could sing one half as well as thou, the world would listen to me entranced as I am listening to thee.”

If the song of the lark is beautiful, the song of the poet is not surpassed. The riotous spirit of music sings in every line, beauty is seen in every stanza, is lavished upon every phrase, upon every melodious verse. The prodigality of beautiful phrases is marvelous. The phrases descriptive of the bird alone are strikingly apt and numerous:

“Blithe spirit”; “bird thou never wert”; “like a cloud of fire”; “like an unbodied joy”; “like a star of heaven”; “like a poet hidden in the light of thought”; “like a highborn maiden in a palace tower”; “like a glowworm golden”; “like a rose embowered”; “sprite and bird”; “thou scorner of the ground.”

To characterize the song properly, the poet finds it necessary to use these phrases: “Profuse strains of unpremeditated art”; “shrill delight”; “keen as are the arrows of that silver sphere”; “all the earth and air with thy voice is loud”; “a rain of melody”; surpassing the “sound of vernal showers” and of “rain-awakened flowers” and “all that ever was joyous, clear and fresh”; “a flood of rapture so divine”; beside it a “hymenÆal chorus” or a “triumphal chaunt” is “but an empty vaunt”; “clear, keen joyance,” “notes flow in such a crystal stream.”

Besides the ardent appreciation for the beautiful song, the lyric contains one sad truth exquisitely expressed:

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

And finally, there is the consummate personal appeal of the poet, which, if we may judge by the matchless lyric, was answered by the same spirit that inspired the graceful scorner of the ground:

“Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!”

Compare the following lyric on the same subject by James Hogg:

Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,
Sweet be thy matin o’er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place—
O, to abide in the desert with thee!
Wild is thy lay and loud,
Far in the downy cloud
Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,
Where art thou journeying?
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O’er fell and mountain sheen,
O’er moor and mountain green,
O’er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim
Over the rainbow’s rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing away!
Then when the gloaming comes,
Low in the heather blooms
Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,
Blest is thy dwelling-place
O, to abide in the desert with thee.

Various interpretations and helpful comments of other kinds may be found on the following pages: