All I tried to give my bairns was an appreciation of rhythm. They loved the trochaic rhythm of a poem, Marsh Marigolds, by G. F. Bradby, that I discovered in a school anthology:—
Slaty skies and a whistling wind and a grim grey land,
April here with a sullen mind and a frozen hand,
Hardly a bird with the heart to sing, or a bud that dares to pry,
Only the plovers hovering,
On the lonely marsh, with a heavy wing
And a sad slow cry.
And it used to make me joyful to hear them gallop through Stevenson's delightful My Ship and I:—
Oh! it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,
Of a ship that goes a-sailing on the pond,