When the winds blow.
Into the star-light
Rushing in spray,
Happy at midnight,
Happy by day.
The true poetry of these lines will not appeal to him in the beginning, but the cadence of the lines will, and they will become fixed in his mind. The beauty of the poems will be his in later years.
As soon as a child is old enough to follow the thread of a simple story, fables and folk-lore will lead him into the realm of the world’s earliest literature. These are the stories which delighted the race in its childhood, and they have delighted childhood in all succeeding generations. These old fables are so familiar that they are incorporated into our everyday conversation. How often do we refer to “The Hare and the Tortoise,” to the “Dog in the Manger,” or to “The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg?” How frequently do we illustrate a point by a reference to “Sour Grapes,” or to “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?” Yet probably not one in twenty knows that all these familiar illustrations find their origin in the fables of Aesop or La Fontaine.
These old classic fables are a part of the literature “which the world has chosen to remember.” They have become a part of the literary coin of the realm. In his introduction to Aesop’s Fables, Joseph Jacobs says: “In their grotesque grace, in their quaint humor, in their trust in the simpler virtues, in their insight into the cruder vices, in their innocence of the fact of sex, Aesop’s Fables are as little children.” As an example:
It happened that a fisher, after fishing all day, caught only a little fish. “Pray, let me go, master,” said the fish. “I am much too small for your eating just now. If you put me back into the river I shall soon grow, then you can make a fine meal off me.”
“Nay, nay, my little fish,” said the fisher, “I have you now. I may not catch you hereafter.”