“ 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;{157}
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom ”

“ 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? ”

“ For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Love is in the greenwood building him a house
Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:
Love is in the greenwood: dawn is in the skies;
And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes. ”

“ And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre!
Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France!
And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters,
Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters.
As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy;
For cold, and stiff, and still are they who wrought thy walls annoy.
Hurrah! hurrah! a single field hath turned the chance of war.
Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry and Henry of Navarre. ”

“ Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?’
‘I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;—
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide;—
And now I am come with this lost Love of mine
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.{247}
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar!’
The bride kiss’d the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff’d off the wine and he threw down the cup. ”

“ Teachers and parents alike have come to feel that the love of poetry in general is more to be desired for children than the knowledge of certain “well known” poems, no matter how good, or even how great, these poems may be. Besides a more tactfully managed education in the schools, there are children’s rooms in the public libraries. I have wished many times during the months spent in making this book, when visits to these rooms were an inspiration, that I might have browsed among the low shelves long ago in childhood, and talked with the same delightful librarians. ”

“ In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Every anthologist must adopt some plan for making selections. Mine has been very simple. I have made a small collection of poems that would have pleased the child I used to be and the boy who was my playmate. Above all things I have striven to keep the book small, for the big books of poetry on our shelves were always left to themselves. It was the little books that became our intimate companions.
To make a selection for boys and girls from the countless riches of lyric poetry in our language, and to reduce that selection to the contents of so small a book as this one, is a grave task. ”

“ 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 sealed 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! ”

“ They enjoyed certain sad poems as much as merry ones, but meditative, moralistic and gloomy poems were never read but once, if they were read at all. And I am glad to say that poems full of sentimentality fared no better. I have brought together much that has been written since they were children, and boys and girls of to-day will find among these poems many of the most enjoyable things in the book. To mention only one recent poet that they would have loved, Walter de la Mare, is to realize how much a child has missed who does not possess his inimitable “Peacock Pie.” ”

“ Lured by the love of the Genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;{146}
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 ”

“ With hawk, and horse, and hunting spear!
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling;
Merrily, merrily, mingle they,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
The mist has left the mountain grey,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming;
And foresters have busy been,
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
‘Waken, lords and ladies gay.’
Waken, lords and ladies gay! ”

“ Place where passing souls can rest
On the way and be their best.
Edwin Markham
{246} YOUNG LOCHINVAR
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the West!
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none;
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He stay’d not for brake and he stopp’d not for stone;
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late ”

“ A child’s enjoyment, as I said above, is what I have striven for in this collection. We who have seen how poetry has come to our rescue with its delight, its healing, and its new courage in times of stress and sorrow, know that it is an inestimable possession. ”

“ If we can have a clear personal realization while we are children, that we love poetry, no amount of well-{7}meaning but sometimes tactless and uninspired teaching of it in schools and colleges can shake us in the knowledge of that love. I remember that the first poem I was condemned to learn by heart in school was “The Builders” by Longfellow. I say condemned, but it was not as a punishment. Every child in the class had to learn it. It is one of the poems that I am sure the poet himself would never have given to a child to learn, beginning, as grown-up readers will remember ”

“ In closing I shall quote briefly from the introduction by Andrew Lang to his anthology for children, “The Blue Poetry Book,” for he speaks my own thoughts better than I can express them: “It does not appear to the Editor that poems about children, or especially intended for children, are those which a child likes best. A child’s imaginative life is spent in the unknown future, and in the romantic past.... The poems written for and about children rather appeal to the old, whose own childhood is now to them a distant fairy world, as the man’s life is to the child.... ”

“ Opes to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle’s eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him. ”

“ Rushing in spray,
Happy at midnight,
Happy by day!
Ever in motion,
Blithesome and cheery.
Still climbing heavenward,
Never aweary;—
Glad of all weathers,
Still seeming best,
Upward or downward,
Motion thy rest;{218}—
Full of a nature
Nothing can tame,
Changed every moment,
Ever the same;—
Ceaseless aspiring,
Ceaseless content,
Darkness or sunshine
Thy element;—
Glorious fountain! ”

“ He understands far more than we give him credit for, but nothing that can harm him. The half-understanding of it, too, the sense of a margin beyond, as in a wood full of unknown glades and birds and flowers unfamiliar, is a great part of a child’s pleasure in reading.... The child does not want everything to be explained. In the unexplained is great pleasure.”
A number of my friends have been kind in giving me the names of poems that they liked best when they were children. ”

“ I should have liked to make a book of this size containing only Elizabethan songs and early English ballads, another entirely devoted to Georgian and Victorian poets, a third to living writers, and a fourth to {6}child-rhymes, parodies, nonsense verses and the like. If the grown-up reader regrets omissions, I beg him to be sympathetic toward the compiler, who has been a prey to those same regrets constantly during the year in which she has been at work on the book. Alas that a volume cannot have the advantages of being both a big book and a little one at the same time! ”

“ The gloe-worm lights us home to bed.
On tops of dewie grasse
So nimbly do we passe,{188}
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. ”

“ And white waves heaving high;
And white waves heaving high, my boys,
The good ship tight and free—
The world of waters is our home,
And merry men are we.
There’s tempest in yon hornèd moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And 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
{73} EPITAPH ON A HARE
Here lies, whom hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s hallo ”

“ In selecting the poems for the girl and boy who used to be, I have tried always to read with their eyes. I have been guided from first to last by their enjoyment or their boredom. The poems that they loved best had highly accented rhythms, and took them into “a land of clear colors and stories.” ”

“ Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme today the helmet of Navarre.”
Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din,
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. ”

“ 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 for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
Alfred Tennyson
{152} THE FORSAKEN MERMAN
Come, dear children, let us away ”

“ Might smile upon another half as great.
He said, “Let worth grow frenzied if it will;
The caliph’s judgment shall be master still.
Go: and since gifts so move thee, take this gem,
The richest in the Tartar’s diadem,
And hold the giver as thou deemest fit!”
“Gifts!” cried the friend; he took, and holding it
High toward the heavens, as though to meet his star,
Exclaimed, “This, too, I owe to thee, Jaffár!”
Leigh Hunt
{89} A SONG OF SHERWOOD
Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake? ”

“ Awa’ to lap the wee flooers on their mither’s breast,
Awa’ to loosen Gaffer Toil frae his daily ca’,
For Auld Daddy Darkness is kindly to a’.
He comes when we’re weary to wean’s frae oor waes,
He comes when the bairnies are getting aff their claes;
To cover them sae cosy, an’ bring bonnie dreams,
So Auld Daddy Darkness is better than he seems.
Steek yer een, my wee tot, ye’ll see Daddy then;
He’s in below the bed claes, to cuddle ye he’s fain;
Noo nestle to his bosie, sleep and dream yer fill,
Till Wee Davie Daylight comes keekin’ owre the hill. ”

“ I should like to express my thanks to these librarians, who have been so kind in various{8} ways. I want especially to thank Annie Carroll Moore, Supervisor of Work with Children in the New York Public Library, who knows the heart of a child from long travelling on “The Roads to Childhood.” ”

“ Auld Daddy Darkness is no wantit yit.
See him in the corners hidin’ frae the licht,
See him at the window gloomin’ at the nicht;
Turn up the gas licht, close the shutters a’,
An’ Auld Daddy Darkness will flee far awa’. ”

“ The year’s at the spring, 36
There was an old woman, 24
There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream, 244
Three jolly Farmers, 249
Tiger! Tiger! burning bright, 98
Time, you old gipsy man, 124
Tree-toad is a small gray person, 223
Under the greenwood tree, 37
Up the airy mountain, 162
Waken, lords and ladies gay!, 44
Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie, 159
Welcome, maids of honor, 38
When icicles hang by the wall, 142
When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, 32
When the voices of children are heard on the green, 158
Who would true valor see, 76 ”