Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, 10 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare ever There as here!" 15 20 -R. Browning. NOTES GENERAL SUGGESTIONS 1. Read through the whole poem, then study it in detail, then read it through again and again as a whole. 2. Try to see and make the children see as vividly as possible, with the mind's eye, the scenes suggested and described in the poems. 3. Regard each poem (1) as developing the imagination, (2) as a storehouse of beautiful language, (3) as (in many cases) using this imaginative and beautiful language to convey a moral lesson. 4. Pay attention to the metre-the number of syllables in each line, and the places where the accent falls. To recognize clearly the metre is a great help to right pronunciation of the words. This is, of course, a truism, yet it is strange how often not only children but older people neglect the metre. In rhymed verse, too, notice where the rhymes come. 5. Look out for lines in which the sound or the metre is specially suited to the sense of the words, and almost suggests it. 6. Look out for the construction of the sentences, and the position of the stops. Children have a natural tendency to make a stop at the end of each line, whether the sense demands one or not. Try and get them to read in a natural voice, showing that they recognize that what they are reading means something-not in a dreary sing-song. 7. The notes are, of course, not to be regarded as so much information to be given to the children. A great deal of what they suggest can and should be drawn from the children. 8. In the notes on metre the mark is used to indicate a "short" or unaccented syllable, the mark for one "long" or accented. An accented syllable with the accompanying unaccented syllables forms a "foot". I. WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD A child's dream. The two eyes (Wynken and Blynken) and the head (Nod) sail off in a wooden shoe (the child's bed) up into the sky, which is spoken of as a sea of dew, where the child is going to fish for the stars, which he calls herrings. It is pretty dreamnonsense, the sort of fancy which an imaginative child might well have. No lesson or serious meaning is to be sought in a poem such as this, but as a play of the imagination it is pleasing to older people as well as to children; and it is an ideal song for a mother to sing to her little ones, when rocking them to sleep. 3. The "river of misty light" is perhaps the rays of the moon, along which the boat is supposed to sail into the dewy sky. Metre.-There are four accented syllables, and therefore four "feet" in ll. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 of each verse; three in ll. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Sometimes the accented syllable stands alone, sometimes there is one short syllable before it, sometimes two: so that the "foot" is either or Wyn | ken Blyn | ken and Nod. II. FOREIGN LANDS Picture a little child climbing up into a tree in his father's garden, and looking out on the scene around his home. The language of the poem is as simple as possible, but even here there is the play of imagination; e.g.: 4. Everything beyond the little circle of his own home is a 66 foreign land" to the child, just as we call all countries but our own "foreign lands". 10. As the sky and clouds are reflected in the water, it is called the sky's "looking-glass". 15. The river when it becomes big is like a child when he becomes "grown up". 18. The unknown country, out of the range of his sight, is to the child fairy-land. Metre. Each line has four accented syllables, preceded usually by a short syllable, so that there are four "feet". Lines I and 2 omit the short syllable in the first foot. III. THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE Here we must picture to ourselves a sick child lying in bed, propped up by pillows, and amusing himself with his toys. The language again is very simple, but imagination shows itself in the child's play with his toy soldiers, toy ships, and toy trees and houses. The uneven surface of the counterpane is a land with hills and plains, big enough to contain a toy army or a toy city, and the child himself is a giant looking down from his big hill (the pillow) upon all these tiny things. Metre. The same as in piece ii. IV. FROM "BROTHER AND SISTER" A pleasant picture of two children's lives in the country-the boy matter-of-fact, self-confident, masterful, learning unselfishness and gentleness from the need of helping his little sister; the girl dreamy and imaginative, yet devoted to her brother, and learning from him to curb her fancies and be more practical. 2, 3. The children's lives are compared to two buds, so close together that the slightest movement, e.g. that of the bee as he hums past them, makes them touch one another. II, 12. The little girl looks up to her brother and thinks that he knows everything which it is possible for a human being to know. 17 seq. Try to make a mental picture of the scenes in this and the next verse. 17-19. The mother watches them as they get further and further away with the benediction of her gaze", i.e. looking lovingly upon them and blessing them. Why are they said to be "lessening "? 23. Lady-Fingers, or kidney-vetch, has yellow flowers, two together at the end of each stalk, flowering June to August. 27, 28. The caw of the rooks seemed solemn and mysterious to the imaginative girl. 34-36. Notice again the imagination of the child: the flowers seem to her to be faces, and almost to speak. 37-40. The dark wood is full of mystery to her—a place where wild animals and gipsies lived. 38. black-scathed = the grass is injured and blackened by the gipsies' fires. 43-56. The softening influence upon the boy of his little sister's companionship is here well indicated. 51-54. He learns to check his impulses, to reflect, to think about others who are different from him, and whom he must consider in his actions. 57-70. The girl, on the other hand, is roused from the dreaminess to which she might have become altogether subject: she has a living being to love instead of a doll or toy, and she learns to value activity and real work as they ought to be valued. 61-64. Notice how the boy is always doing something, not dreaming-playing at marbles, or with a top, or stealing apples. 62. He threw sharp stones to cut the stem of the apple and make it drop from the tree. 63, 64. Every child will be familiar with the winding of the 'spiral string" which "loops the orbits", i.e. winds itself round the circles of the top. 65-69. The girl's wandering (vagrant) fancy ceased to build "castles in the air"-her wishes and their fulfilment being alike unreal. To“grave” = to cut deeply and permanently. The children are compared to sculptors: the girl imagines a very beautiful statue, but it is never really made; the boy plans it in his head (thought-tracked), and follows it up by actually chiselling it out of a block of marble (graving it with deeds). 70. The boy does not concern himself with indefinite fancies of what may happen in the future-"what will be". He concerns himself with the realization of something in the present-" what is ". Metre.-There are verses or stanzas of fourteen lines. The first twelve lines of these rhyme alternately; the last two with one another. Each line contains ten syllables, five of which are accented, making five - - “ feet ". V. VITAÏ LAMPADA (a) Keenness-no shirking or slackness, but doing our very best; (b) Fairness—no sneaking or taking of mean advantages; (c) Unselfishness-doing the right for right's sake, not for hope of reward : these are three of the great moral lessons taught by life at our |