When I forget thy thousand ways
Then life and all shall cease.”
Charles Lamb knew the Child that Wordsworth reverenced: the child of imagination
“... that to itself
All seasons could controul”.
The verses he would have repeated in that child’s company were nonsense rhymes or metrical “wild tales”; not without a song or two from Shakespeare (after the wise example of Mother Goose); for he never could keep the things he loved best out of talk or writing.
Poetry for Children was written to fit parental ideals, just as stories were sometimes invented to accompany stock illustrations; yet Lamb’s gay humour played pranks here and there, as in the gratulatory ode, “Going into Breeches”:
“Joy to Philip, he this day
Has his long coats cast away
And (the childish season gone)