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I find that my bairns have a genuine love for poetry. To-day I read them Tennyson's Lady of Shalott; then I read them The May Queen. I asked them which was the better, and most of them preferred, The Lady of Shalott. I asked for reasons, and Margaret Steel said that the one was strange and mysterious, while the other told of an ordinary death-bed. The whole class seemed to be delighted when I called The May Queen a silly mawkish piece of sentimentality.
I have made them learn many pieces from Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and they love the rhythm of such pieces as The Shadow March.
Another poem that they love is Helen of Kirkconnell; I asked which stanza was the best, and they all agreed on this beautifully simple one:—
O Helen fair, beyond compare,
I'll mak a garland o' thy hair;
Shall bind my heart for evermair,
Until the day I dee,
I believe in reading out a long poem and then asking them to memorise a few verses. I did this with The Ancient Mariner. Long poems are an abomination to children; to ask them to commit to memory a piece like Gray's Elegy is unkind.
I have given them the first verse of Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven. I did not expect them to understand a word of it; my idea was to test their power of appreciating sound. Great music might convey something to rustics, but great poetry cannot convey much. Still, I try to lead them to the greater poetry. I wrote on the board a verse of Little Jim and a verse of La Belle Dame sans Merci, and I think I managed to give them an inkling of what is good and what is bad verse.