A boy prefers the wild Prince and Poins to Barbara Lewthwaite, the little girl who moralised to the lamb. We make a mistake when we ‘write down’ to children; still more do we err when we tell a child not to read this or that because he cannot understand it. He understands far more than we give him credit for, but nothing that can harm him. The half-understanding of it, too, the sense of a margin beyond, as in a wood full of unknown glades, and birds, and flowers unfamiliar, is great part of a child’s pleasure in reading. For this reason many poems are included here in which the Editor does not suppose that the readers will be able to pass an examination. For another reason a few pieces of no great excellence as poetry are included. Though they may appear full of obviousness to us, there is an age of dawning reflection to which they are not obvious. Longfellow, especially, seems to the Editor to be a kind of teacher to bring readers to the more reflective poetry of Wordsworth, while he has a sort of simple charm in which there is a foretaste of the charm of Tennyson and Keats. But everyone who attempts to make such a collection must inevitably be guided by his own recollections of childhood, of his childish likings, and the development of the love of poetry in himself. We have really no other criterion, for children are such kind and good-natured critics that they will take pleasure in whatever is given or read to them, and it is hard for us to discern where the pleasure is keenest and most natural.

The Editor trusts that this book may be a guide into romance and fairyland to many children. Of a child’s enthusiasm for poetry, and the life which he leads by himself in poetry, it is very difficult to speak. Words cannot easily bring back the pleasure of it, now discerned in the far past like a dream, full of witchery, and music, and adventure. Some children, perhaps the majority, are of such a nature that they weave this dream for themselves, out of their own imaginings, with no aid or with little aid from the poets. Others, possibly less imaginative, if more bookish, gladly accept the poet’s help, and are his most flattering readers. There are moments in that remote life which remain always vividly present to memory, as when first we followed the chase with Fitz-James, or first learned how ‘The Baron of Smaylho’me rose with day,’ or first heard how

All day long the noise of battle roll’d Among the mountains by the winter sea.

Almost the happiest of such moments were those lulled by the sleepy music of ‘The Castle of Indolence,’ a poem now perhaps seldom read, at least by the young. Yet they may do worse than visit the drowsy castle of him who wrote

So when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles Placed far amid the melancholy main.

Childhood is the age when a love of poetry may be born and strengthened—a taste which grows rarer and more rare in our age, when examinations spring up and choke the good seed. By way of lending no aid to what is called Education, very few notes have been added. The child does not want everything to be explained; in the unexplained is great pleasure. Nothing, perhaps, crushes the love of poetry more surely and swiftly than the use of poems as school-books. They are at once associated in the mind with lessons, with long, with endless hours in school, with puzzling questions and the agony of an imperfect memory, with grammar and etymology, and everything that is the enemy of joy. We may cause children to hate Shakespeare or Spenser as Byron hated Horace, by inflicting poets on them, not for their poetry, but for the valuable information in the notes. This danger, at least, it is not difficult to avoid in the Blue Poetry Book.

CONTENTS

Page
ANONYMOUS:
 A Red, Red Rose[66]
 Annan Water[178]
 Cherry Ripe[176]
 Helen of Kirkconnel[115]
 Lawlands of Holland[106]
 Lyke-Wake Dirge[330]
 Sir Hugh; or, the Jew’s Daughter[326]
 Sir Patrick Spens[259]
 The Twa Corbies[78]
 The Wife of Usher’s Well[124]
 Willie Drowned in Yarrow[163]

BARNEFIELD, RICHARD, 1574-1627:
 The Nightingale[206]

BLAKE, WILLIAM, 1757-1828:
 Night[ 5]
 Nurse’s Song[ 1]
 The Chimney-sweeper[16]
 The Lamb[ 4]

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1809-1861:
 To Flush, my Dog[51]

BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, 1794-1878:
 To a Waterfowl[179]

BUNYAN, JOHN, 1628-1688:
 The Pilgrim[274]

BURN, MINSTREL:
 Leader Haughs[284]

BURNS, ROBERT, 1759-1796:
 Bannockburn[67]
 I Love my Jean[62]
 O, wert Thou in the Cauld Blast[61]
 The Banks o’ Doon[64]
 The Farewell[68]
 There’ll never be Peace till Jamie comes Hame[63]

BYRON, LORD, 1788-1824:
 Could Love for Ever, Run like a River[71]
 So, we’ll go no more a Roving[181]
 Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa [111]
 The Destruction of Sennacherib[82]

CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1777-1844:
 Hohenlinden[36]
 Lord Ullin’s Daughter[13]
 The Battle of the Baltic[43]
 The Last Man[255]
 The Soldier’s Dream[27]
 Ye Mariners of England[22]

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1772-1834:
 Christabel[312]
 Kubla Khan[142]
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner[215]

COLLINS, WILLIAM, 1721-1756:
 Ode written in mdccxlvi[88]
 To Evening[121]

COWPER, WILLIAM, 1731-1800:
 Boadicea[341]
 Epitaph on a Hare[285]
 John Gilpin[28]
 On a Spaniel called ‘Beau’ Killing a Young Bird[ 6]
 The Dog and the Water-lily[50]
 The Poplar Field[95]
 The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk[276]

DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1745-1814:
 Tom Bowling[270]

DRAYTON, MICHAEL, 1563-1631:
 Ballad of Agincourt[18]

DRYDEN, JOHN, 1631-1701:
 Alexander’s Feast; or, the Power of Music[129]

ELLIOTT, JANE, 1727-1805:
 The Flowers o’ the Forest[137]

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1728-1774:
 Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog[38]

GRAY, THOMAS, 1716-1771:
 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard[298]
 The Bard[243]

HERRICK, ROBERT, 1591-1674:
 To Blossoms[92]
 To Daffodils[89]

HEYWOOD, THOMAS—d. circa 1640:
 Morning[176]

HOGG, JAMES, 1772-1835:
 A Boy’s Song[ 2]
 The Skylark[198]

HOOD, THOMAS, 1798-1845:
 A Lake and a Fairy Boat[87]
 I Remember, I Remember[ 3]

JONSON, BEN, 1574-1637:
 Hymn to Diana[80]

KEATS, JOHN, 1796-1821:
 La Belle Dame Sans Mercy[265]
 On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer[86]
 Winter[311]

LAMB, CHARLES, 1775-1834:
 Hester[120]

LAMB, MARY, 1765-1847:
 The Child and the Snake[268]

LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 1775-1864:
 Rose Aylmer[72]

LINDSAY, LADY A., 1750-1825:
 Auld Robin Gray[161]

LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH, 1807-1882:
 The Beleagured City[128]
 The Day is Done[192]
 The Fire of Drift-wood[185]
 The Village Blacksmith[37]
 The Wreck of the Hesperus[46]

LOVELACE, RICHARD, 1618-1658:
 To Althea from Prison[117]
 To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars[102]

MACAULAY, LORD, 1800-1859:
 Ivry[257]
 The Armada[167]
 The Battle of Naseby[211]

MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER, 1564-1593:
 The Passionate Shepherd to his Love[135]

MARVELL, ANDREW, 1620-1678:
 Song of the Emigrants in Bermuda[183]
 The Girl Describes her Fawn[25]

MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS, 1734-1788:
 Cumnor Hall[200]

MILTON, JOHN, 1608-1674:

 L’Allegro[144]
 Il Penseroso[150]
 Lycidas[291]
 On The Morning of Christ’s Nativity[303]

MINSTREL BURN:
 Leader Haughs[284]

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border:
 Battle of Otterbourne[286]
 Kinmont Willie[248]
 The Demon Lover[102]

MOORE, THOMAS, 1779-1852:
 As Slow our Ship[65]
 The Light of Other Days[184]
 The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls[70]
 The Minstrel-Boy[68]

NAIRNE, LADY, 1766-1845:
 The Land o’ the Leal[182]

NASHE, THOMAS, 1567-1600:
 Spring[210]

PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE, 1785-1866:
 War-song of Dinas Vawr[187]

Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry:
 Mary Ambree[171]

POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 1809-1849:
 Annabel Lee[96]
 The Haunted Palace[240]
 The Sleeper[207]
 The Valley of Unrest[107]
 To Helen[198]
 To One in Paradise[79]
 Ulalume[138]

PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH, 1802-1839:
 The Red Fisherman; or, the Devil’s Decoy[331]

SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1771-1832:
 A Weary Lot is Thine, Fair Maid[194]
 Alice Brand[55]
 Allen-a-Dale[126]
 County Guy[81]
 Evening[74]
 Gathering Song of Donald Dhu[82]
 Hunting Song[ 12]
 Hymn for the Dead[94]
 Jock of Hazeldean[156]
 Lucy Ashton’s Song[73]
 Nora’s Vow[17]
 Proud Maisie[92]
 Rosabelle[213]
 St. Swithin’s Chair[109]
 The Cavalier[85]
 The Eve of St. John[278]
 The Outlaw[40]
 The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill[123]
 Twist ye, Twine ye[101]
 Where Shall the Lover Rest?[247]
 Young Lochinvar[45]

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 1564-1616:
 A Sea Dirge[71]
 Fidele[199]
 Orpheus with his Lute[77]
 Where the Bee Sucks, there Suck I[181]
 Who is Silvia? What is she[73]
 Winter[95]

SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, 1792-1822:
 Arethusa[191]
 To a Skylark[203]
 The Recollection[159]

SHIRLEY, JAMES, 1594-1666:
 Death the Leveller[177]

SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, 1554-1586:
 Sleep[94]

SURTEES, ROBERT, 1779-1834:
 Barthram’s Dirge[111]

WOLFE, CHARLES, 1791-1823:
 The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna[108]
 To Mary[100]

WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 1770-1850:
 I Wandered Lonely[119]
 Lucy Gray; or, Solitude[ 8]
 On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott
    from Abbotsford for Naples, 1831[343]
 The Kitten and Falling Leaves[271]
 The Reverie of Poor Susan[164]
 The Solitary Reaper[90]
 To the Cuckoo[113]
 Two April Mornings[195]
 Yarrow Unvisited, 1803[322]
 Yarrow Visited, September 1814[324]

WOTTON, SIR HENRY, 1568-1639:
 Elizabeth of Bohemia[175]