But we should soon learn, and aways remember, that the contemplative and idyllic lyric, however it may delight the chosen child and the adult, will, as a rule, neither please nor train the class, and that poems written for children and about children are not at all likely to be the things children love best and most profit by; the poetry should not linger long in the nursery stage. The class should be pushed on as early as possible into simple but heroic ballads, into lyrics, musical and noble, but simple and easy as to content—all chosen from the great poets.
Even if one desired it, it would probably be impossible to dislodge Hiawatha from its shrine in American elementary schools; and no one ought to covet the task, for the iconoclast is likely to be set down as a vulgar and egotistic person. Hiawatha has become entrenched in the schools by some such reasoning as this: Here is a poem written by an American on aspects of life among the American aborigines; American children should study it as literature. Children ought to be instructed in primitive life and in myth; therefore they should study Hiawatha as literature. Children should learn much about nature and should learn nature-poetry; therefore they should study Hiawatha as literature.
Of course, there are pretty things in Hiawatha. Some of the passages about the forest and the waters, the making of the canoe, the conquest of Mondanim, the picture-writing, may most profitably be interwoven with other things. It is instructive both as to literature and as to fact to put the making of Robinson Crusoe's boat beside the building of Hiawatha's canoe. But there are objections to a long and exclusive course in this poem. The mythical side of it is baffling and discouraging. Once more let me say that a class is an extremely acute and inquiring personality; after a few days it "wants to know." And it is puzzled and dismayed, and finally frightened off, by the fact that everything means something else. Furthermore, the details both of Indian life and of Indian belief are so chosen and sifted and beautified as to be most misleading, if we are emphasizing that side of the poem. Lastly, it is not good for the young children to have a long-continued and constantly renewed experience in the alien and wearing meter, and the unmusical rhythm of Hiawatha; and the verse-form dictates certain trying peculiarities of style, in especial the slightly varied iteration of detail:
Ah, my brother from the North land,
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the White Rabbit,
You have stolen the maiden from me,
You have laid your hand upon her,
You have wooed and won my maiden.