A SHORT TALK TO CHILDREN ABOUT

POETRY

HIS would be a dull world without song; if birds

had nothing to say but to cry from hunger or fear, if frogs didn't croak or crickets chirp for the fun of it; worse than all, if we people had no use for words except to help in our business.

But, since language began, men have always been making poetry of it, setting up arrangements of words and lines that have a mysterious power to start strange or sweet thoughts singing through the mind.

This power seems like the power of an enchanter, for no one can fully explain it, and even the poets themselves, the enchanters, cannot tell when they are going to make it work. For they do not make true poetry all the time that they write verses. Much of the time they are just talking or humming along, perhaps pleasantly, perhaps rather stupidly, and, the first thing we know and the first thing they know, they are stirring our hearts with song.

That there is mystery in this power you may believe when you remember that the youngest of you has sometimes been delighted with a poem, or a part of a poem,

whose meaning he could but faintly understand. Perhaps you do not know that some very learned man, who could tell the history of every word in the lines, might quite fail to catch the beauty that was felt by that child who could not even speak distinctly.

There is much more in this than we have time now to talk about, but you can see that, since the power to make true poetry and the power truly to hear it are things that learning cannot work out, because there is something in them that we can fairly call magic, therefore you unlearned children stand side by side with your elders in this matter, and must be considered a serious part of the poet's audience. Indeed, you are of the number of his judges, and he must not give you any baby-talk.

So, in this selection of poems made for you from among the greater English poets of the past six hundred years, there are very few which were written especially for children. The best are not too good for you if you can hear them, and sometimes you can hear the sweetness or the greatness sounding through a poem, although you do not quite know what it is about.

There are poems here that may puzzle the largest of you; but there are none which are altogether beyond the hearing of the smallest. Indeed, they have been submitted, nearly all of them, to a little girl who has not yet learned to read. They had to pass an examination on their power to please her.

I hope you will not think, because I have said that

the youngest ear may often catch the note of beauty in a great poem, that therefore you have nothing to learn in this matter. It is much like music; repeated thoughtful listening will feed the power to hear, and the magic of words will grow in your understanding, so that more poetry will speak to you than at first, and that which already speaks to you will say more and more. And what is better worth your while than thus, from year to year, to gain power to receive that enchantment by which poetry, the music of language, is continually lifting and sweetening the thought of men and women and children?

Six hundred years is about the age of our poetry. For, though the language did not begin at any exact time, yet, if you should look farther back, you would find the words so different from ours that it would be like reading a foreign language.

The English language came first from North Germany, with the Anglo-Saxons, who conquered what is now England. While it was growing and changing, through the centuries, as all languages do, new conquerors came, the Normans, who brought in the French words that they had learned to use. After a while these two languages began to mix, and in the fourteenth century, the time of Chaucer, the mixture had become pretty well stirred, and most of the words we use were already in the language, though many of them wore a shape as strange and curious to our eyes as the picturesque costumes of the people whom Chaucer tells about. With some puzzling, we can make out most of what

Chaucer says, and we feel that his language is ours and his poetry our poetry.

After Chaucer, the language changed less rapidly than before, for, as he was at once seen to be a great poet, writers following him were naturally familiar with his poems, and so had a sort of monument of words to refer to. And, as more books came to be written in English, and, after a while, the printing-press was discovered and set to distributing books rapidly, the language became more and more settled, though it has never entirely stopped changing, and never will, while it is alive.

Very little of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry is given in this collection, because his language is still too difficult for you to follow readily by yourselves; but some of you might get your parents to read and explain to you some part of his Canterbury Tales, so that you should get a feeling of his charm.

He lived in the time of Edward Third, who was a famous fighter against the French. He was in France, in Edward's army, for a while, when he was young, and all his life he was much about the court. He seems to have gone about observing all sorts of people, with eyes that were very sharp, but also very kindly. Even toward mean and wicked people we may fancy that he was thankful for their furnishing him at least with curious specimens for his collection, and the noble and beautiful things that he finds in some men and women move him to the sweetest notes of pleasure. He makes us feel very nearly related to all the variously dressed people that he shows us at the inn, and we are glad to

jog along toward Canterbury in his company and

theirs.

Though Chaucer's example set other men to try to do somewhat as he did, it was about two hundred years before another poet appeared who could be called great in comparison with him. The sixteenth century had come, and had brought a wonderful waking up of the world. America had been discovered near the end of the century before, and adventurous sailors were hurrying over all the oceans. Men got the feeling that the earth, after all, was still young, and that more things were possible than they had yet dreamt of. The printing-press was scattering news and learning fast and far. Eager students were hunting through the great writings of the Greeks and Romans. It was a time of new life and new hopes.

Then many poets, stirred by this strong, fresh spirit of the time, began to sing in England. The greatest of them was Edmund Spenser. There was a rich music in him that was new to our language. We may believe that it filled men's ears with the promise that poetry, as well as the unexplored world, would reward their search with delights that they could not foresee.

In Spenser's time and after, a whole choir of freshhearted poets were singing in England. Soon one rose among them who was far greater than the rest, greater than Spenser or Chaucer, greater than any who has come since, greater, most English-speaking people would say, than any other, in any country, since the world began. This was Shakespeare. He began to