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.)