The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Children's Garland from the Best Poets, by Various, Edited by Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Title: The Children's Garland from the Best Poets
Author: Various
Editor: Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Release Date: December 7, 2008 [eBook #27441]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN'S GARLAND FROM THE BEST POETS***
E-text prepared by Chris Curnow, Katherine Ward, Joseph Cooper,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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Golden Treasury Series
THE
CHILDREN'S GARLAND
FROM THE BEST POETS
SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY
COVENTRY PATMORE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1895
First Edition printed 1861 (dated 1862). Reprinted with corrections, and Index added, February 1862. Reprinted with corrections, 1863. Reprinted 1866, 1871, 1874, 1877, 1879, March and August 1882, 1884, 1891, 1892, 1895.
PREFACE
This volume will, I hope, be found to contain nearly all the genuine poetry in our language fitted to please children,—of and from the age at which they have usually learned to read,—in common with grown people. A collection on this plan has, I believe, never before been made, although the value of the principle seems clear.
The test applied, in every instance, in the work of selection, has been that of having actually pleased intelligent children; and my object has been to make a book which shall be to them no more nor less than a book of equally good poetry is to intelligent grown persons. The charm of such a book to the latter class of readers is rather increased than lessened by the surmised existence in it of an unknown amount of power, meaning and beauty, beyond that which is at once to be seen; and children will not like this volume the less because, though containing little or nothing which will not at once please and amuse them, it also contains much, the full excellence of which they may not as yet be able to understand.
The application of the practical test above mentioned has excluded nearly all verse written expressly for children, and most of the poetry written about children for grown people. Hence, the absence of several well-known pieces, which some persons who examine this volume may be surprised at not finding in it.
I have taken the liberty of omitting portions of a few poems, which would else have been too long or otherwise unsuitable for the collection; and, in a very few instances, I have ventured to substitute a word or a phrase, when that of the author has made the piece in which it occurs unfit for children's reading. The abbreviations I have been compelled to make in the "Ancient Mariner," in order to bring that poem within the limits of this collection, are so considerable as to require particular mention and apology.
No translations have been inserted but such as, by their originality of style and modification of detail, are entitled to stand as original poems.
Coventry Patmore.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
PAGE
- A barking sound the shepherd hears248
- A chieftain to the Highlands bound246
- A country life is sweet31
- A fox, in life's extreme decay171
- A fragment of a rainbow bright41
- A lion cub, of sordid mind301
- A Nightingale that all day long276
- A parrot, from the Spanish main124
- A perilous life, and sad as life may be76
- A widow bird sate mourning for her love329
- A wonder stranger ne'er was known165
- Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)19
- Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight20
- Among the dwellings framed by birds32
- An ancient story I'll tell you anon159
- An old song made by an aged old pate136
- An outlandish knight came from the North lands221
- Art thou the bird whom man loves best99
- As I a fare had lately past9
- As it fell upon a day
CONTENTS
- The Child and the Piper
- On May Morning
- The Approach of the Fairies
- Answer to a Child's Question
- The Brook
- Stars
- The Shepherd to his Love
- The Kitten and Falling Leaves
- The Ferryman, Venus, and Cupid
- Song
- Lucy Gray, or Solitude
- Rain in Summer
- Epitaph on a Hare
- Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel
- La Belle Dame sans Mercy
- Winter
- The Inchcape Rock
- Written in March
- Lord Randal
- John Barleycorn
- Mary-Ann's Child
- The Useful Plough
- A Wren's Nest
- A Fine Day
- Casabianca, a True Story
- Signs of Rain
- How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
- The Rainbow