If, p.2
iF, page 2
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
The Lost Doll
CHARLES KINGSLEY
1819–75
I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay.
I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arms trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled;
Yet for old sakes’ sake, she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.
Infant Joy
WILLIAM BLAKE
1757–1827
This poem was published in William Blake’s collection Songs of Innocence, which explores the idea that childhood is a time of freedom and spontaneity. In some of his other poems, William Blake takes a different view, suggesting that the spirit of childhood can be ruined by the rigidity of society.
‘I have no name,
I am but two days old.’
What shall I call thee?
‘I happy am,
Joy is my name.’
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!
Little Boy Blue
EUGENE FIELD
1850–95
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
‘Now, don’t you go till I come,’ he said,
‘And don’t you make any noise!’
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue –
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place –
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
Please Mrs Butler
ALLAN AHLBERG
1938–
Is there someone like Derek Drew at your school? Perhaps you behave like him? Does your teacher get as exasperated as Mrs Butler?
Please Mrs Butler
This boy Derek Drew
Keeps copying my work, Miss.
What shall I do?
Go and sit in the hall, dear.
Go and sit in the sink.
Take your books on the roof, my lamb.
Do whatever you think.
Please Mrs Butler
This boy Derek Drew
Keeps taking my rubber, Miss.
What shall I do?
Keep it in your hand, dear.
Hide it up your vest.
Swallow it if you like, my love.
Do what you think best.
Please Mrs Butler
This boy Derek Drew
Keeps calling me rude names, Miss.
What shall I do?
Lock yourself in the cupboard, dear.
Run away to sea.
Do whatever you can, my flower.
But don’t ask me.
maggie and milly and molly and may
e e cummings
1894–1962
E e cummings was an innovative twentieth-century American poet who created his own poetic style – experimenting with language, sentence structure, punctuation and the visual image of the poem. Notice how he uses lower-case letters and how his use of parentheses (brackets) is not what you expect. The unconventional look of his poems makes the reader slow down and consider all these effects. This was a time when artists were trying new things and changing the way that poems and paintings looked. We could compare e e cummings’ work to the painter Picasso’s new style of abstract art. For another poem that looks different on the page, have a look at the Apollinaire poem on page 59.
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
Little Brother’s Secret
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
1888–1923
When my birthday was coming
Little Brother had a secret:
He kept it for days and days
And just hummed a little tune when I asked him.
But one night it rained
And I woke up and heard him crying:
Then he told me.
I planted two lumps of sugar in your garden
Because you love it so frightfully
I thought there would be a whole sugar tree for your birthday,
And now it will all be melted.
O, the darling!
Homework! Oh, Homework!
JACK PRELUTSKY
1940–
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you
away in the sink,
if only a bomb
would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You’re giving me fits.
I’d rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework
my teacher assigns.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You’re last on my list,
I simply can’t see
why you even exist,
if you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
Love Between Brothers and Sisters
ISAAC WATTS
1674–1748
Isaac Watts is often credited with being the father of the church hymn. His poems were designed to be sung in worship, and include ‘Joy to the World’, which you may know. This poem encourages us to be kind to our siblings. Watts refers to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, in which Cain, jealous of God’s favouring of Abel, kills his brother in order to take his place.
Whatever brawls disturb the street,
There should be peace at home;
Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,
Quarrels should never come.
Birds in their little nests agree;
And ’tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight.
Hard names at first, and threatening words
That are but noisy breath,
May grow to clubs and naked swords,
To murder and to death.
The devil tempts one mother’s son
To rage against another,
So wicked Cain was hurried on,
’Til he had killed his brother.
The wise will let their anger cool
At least before ’tis night;
But in the bosom of a fool
It burns ’til morning light.
Pardon, O Lord, our childish rage,
Our little brawls remove;
That as we grow to riper age,
Our hearts may all be love.
The Pleiades
AMY LOWELL
1874–1925
The six or seven bright stars known as the Pleiades have long inspired poets. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote of the stars, ‘Many a night I saw the Pleiades rising thro’ the mellow shade/ Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid,’ in his poem ‘Locksley Hall’. In Greek mythology, these stars represented the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas who holds up the world. The daughters’ names are Maia, Electra, Elaeno, Taygeta, Merope, Alcyone and Sterope. They were transformed into the stars to save them from the pursuit of the hunter Orion. Amy Lowell had a particular reason to write about the stars: her brother Percival was an astronomer.
By day you cannot see the sky
For it is up so very high.
You look and look, but it’s so blue
That you can never see right through.
But when night comes it is quite plain,
And all the stars are there again.
They seem just like old friends to me,
I’ve known them all my life you see.
There is the dipper first, and there
Is Cassiopeia in her chair,
Orion’s belt, the Milky Way,
And lots I know but cannot say.
One group looks like a swarm of bees,
Papa says they’re the Pleiades;
But I think they must be the toy
Of some nice little angel boy.
Perhaps his jackstones which to-day
He has forgot to put away,
And left them lying on the sky
Where he will find them bye and bye.
I wish he’d come and play with me.
We’d have such fun, for it would be
A most unusual thing for boys
To feel that they had stars for toys!
The Children’s Hour
H.W. LONGFELLOW
1807–82
Longfellow’s three youngest daughters were called Alice, Edith and Allegra, like the girls in the poem, so it is likely that ‘The Children’s Hour’ is autobiographical. Here Longfellow mentions the Bishop of Bingen, a character in an old legend from Germany. The Mouse-Tower is an ancient building on an island in the river Rhine, which is where, it is said, the cruel and tyrannous Bishop died after mistreating the starving peasants of his district, eaten alive at the top of the tower by hundreds of mice. Robert Southey wrote a poem about this, which Longfellow’s little girls would have known.
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
The First Tooth
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
1775–1834 / 1764–1847
SISTER
Through the house what busy joy,
Just because the infant boy
Has a tiny tooth to show!
I have got a double row,
All as white, and all as small;
Yet no one cares for mine at all.
He can say but half a word,
Yet that single sound’s preferred
To all the words that I can say
In the longest summer day.
He cannot walk, yet if he put
With mimic motion out his foot,
As if he thought he were advancing,
It’s prized more than my best dancing.
BROTHER
Sister, I know you jesting are,
Yet O! of jealousy beware.
If the smallest seed should be
In your mind of jealousy,
It will spring, and it will shoot,
Till it bear the baneful fruit.
I remember you, my dear,
Young as is this infant here.
There was not a tooth of those
Your pretty even ivory rows,
But as anxiously was watched,
Till it burst its shell new hatched,
As if it a Phoenix were,
Or some other wonder rare.
So when you began to walk –
So when you began to talk –
As now, the same encomiums past.
’Tis not fitting this should last
Longer than our infant days;
A child is fed with milk and praise.
It Was Long Ago
ELEANOR FARJEON
1881–1965
Grandparents often want to share trips down memory lane. Although these stories may sometimes seem a little pointless, what matters is not the destination at the end of the journey, but the stroll with a loved one.
I’ll tell you, shall I, something I remember?
Something that still means a great deal to me.
It was long ago.
A dusty road in summer I remember,
A mountain, and an old house, and a tree
That stood, you know,
Behind the house. An old woman I remember
In a red shawl with a grey cat on her knee
Humming under a tree.
She seemed the oldest thing I can remember,
But then perhaps I was not more than three.
It was long ago.
I dragged on the dusty road, and I remember
How the old woman looked over the fence at me
And seemed to know
How it felt to be three, and called out, I remember
‘Do you like bilberries and cream for tea?’
I went under the tree
And while she hummed, and the cat purred, I remember
How she filled a saucer with berries and cream for me
So long ago,
Such berries and such cream as I remember
I never had seen before, and never see
