Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10: The Guide

When the relation expressed is that of a sign or symbol and that which is signified or symbolized, a cause and its effect, a material and that which is made from it, or is some other similar association of ideas, the figure is metonymy.

We speak of “the pulpit” when we mean the ministry, the “stage” when we mean the theatrical world, and thus use concrete symbols to represent abstract ideas. Again, we frequently make use of such an expression as “Have you read Pope or Dryden?” when we refer to the works rather than to the writer, and thus substitute cause for effect. “Columns of glittering steel advanced” contains another form of metonymy, that in which a material (steel) is named for that made from it (spears).

Search for examples of these two figures in the selections in Journeys Through Bookland. Both are elusive, and at first you are apt to pass over many without noticing them. As you continue your search and grow keen in it you will be surprised to see how common they are, both in what you read and in your own speech.

Apostrophe and Personification. An address to a person or thing, absent or dead, is an apostrophe, and when an inanimate object is assumed to be alive or an animate object is assumed to be raised to a higher plane of existence it is said to be by personification. Examples of the latter figure are “death’s menace,” “laugh of morn.” In the line “Lucidity of soul unlocks the lips” are both metonymy and personification. The following is the beginning of a beautiful apostrophe:

Another fine example is found in Whittier’s Snow-Bound:

“O Time and Change!—with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left all that circle now,—
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the path their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor.”

The following lines are from Lord Byron’s Apostrophe to the Ocean:

“Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore;—upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”

Children enjoy searching for the different varieties of figures in the selections which they read. Not much instruction is needed, and it is not necessary that they should know the names of the different figures or acquire a great deal of technical knowledge. Yet in helping them to recognize figures it is best to proceed in a logical manner, showing, one at a time, what the principal figures are, upon what they are based, and what they add in vividness and beauty to the language. When one figure is understood, help the children to find many good examples in other selections, before taking up the second figure.

As a help to parents and children, we give an outline here for a study of the figures of speech in Shelley’s beautiful Ode to a Skylark (Volume VII, page 275).

“In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun.”

3 and 4. Metonymy and Synecdoche are nearly related and in this poem the examples are numerous. Here are a few:

“Better than all treasures
That in books are found.”

“Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know.”

“Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.”

“The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.”

“The blue deep thou wingest.”

5. Personification. In this poem the poet personifies the lark, beginning with “Blithe spirit, bird thou never wert,” in the first stanza and closing with “Teach me half the gladness that thy brain must know,” in the last stanza.

6. Apostrophe. Most odes have in them something of the nature of an apostrophe. The Ode to a Skylark begins

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!”

Further along in the lyric we find the line,

“Teach us, bird or sprite.”

Young children will not appreciate the ode as it deserves; accordingly it will be better to use simpler poems for the first lessons. The obvious figures may well be shown first, leaving the more finished and brilliant ones till the minds of the children become more mature. For instance, as the simile is the most obvious of figures and may be found in nearly every poem of any length, it is the best with which to begin. Notice what a number can be found in A Visit from Saint Nicholas (Volume II, page 202). Explain those that are used in the description of Saint Nicholas:

“And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.”

“His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.”

“The smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”

“That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.”

Encourage the children to find other similes themselves—the characteristic like and as will make the task easy.

In The First Snowfall (Volume II, page 403) are a number of metaphors which may be easily explained to children. For instance, the following will be readily understood:

Summary

We have considered the most common and expressive figures, and if one accustoms himself to the recognition of these and an explanation of their meaning as has been indicated here, he will soon recognize others of more complex type. Mere classification is valueless; our purpose is to learn to see and to feel more clearly and more deeply by means of our intelligent grasp upon these figurative expressions.

Thought, then, is mastered by attention to the details we have discussed, and until we habitually notice these things our reading is apt to be slipshod and profitless. It will help us to retain these facts in mind if we put them into a systematic outline.

Mastery of thought, which is at the foundation of an appreciation of literature, depends upon mastery of—

1. I.  Words in their special meaning.
2. II.  Allusions, or references to
3. 1. Historical events and personages.
4. 2. Literary masterpieces.
5. 3. Scientific truths.
6. 4. Biblical events and truths.
7. 5. Mythological creations.
8. III. Figures, of which the more important and common are those—
9. 1. Based on comparisons:
10. a. simile.
11. b. metaphor.
12. 2. Based on natural associations:
13. a. synecdoche.
14. b. metonymy.
15. 3. Of apostrophe.
16. 4. Of personification.
17. IV.  Sentences, the units of thought.
18. V.  Paragraphs, the collections of related thought units.

CHAPTER XI

Reading Poetry

On page 410 of Volume One is Longfellow’s exquisite poem, The Reaper and the Flowers. We can imagine a little family group reading this some quiet evening when the lamp throws shadows into the corners and the bed-time hour draws near. No one could call the children in on a fine summer day, and, when fresh from their play, the blood is bounding through their veins, expect them to be touched by delicate sentiment, or to appreciate musical numbers. Literature has something for every hour, every mood, every circumstance. It may be that there is one little vacant chair in this family circle, or that from some neighbor’s family a child has gone. Fear clutches at the youthful hearts and Grief shudders behind each chair. Even the warm bed in the dark room is a dread, for we have so surrounded death with mystery and terror that even the young are aghast when it is mentioned. But our best-loved poet has a cheering message for every one, and into this little group the parent brings it. In soft and sympathetic voice he reads aloud, giving the slow and gentle music of the lines time to steal into the youthful hearts.

As he reads, he pauses now and then to speak to his little audience, watching ever not to be sharp in his questionings or anything but kindly in his comments. Something like the following might be the way he brings out the meaning:

“‘There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.’

“A Reaper—a man walking in the grain, cutting it as he goes. Not with a machine such as we see on the farm nowadays, but with a short curved blade which the poet calls a sickle. It is a keen blade the sickle has, and with every stroke ripened grain and all the little flowers that have grown up among it fall to the ground. But the poet means more. He thinks that the Reaper is Death, that the bearded grain is the men and women who have lived to a ripe old age and who are ready to die, ready for the rewards of a long and well-spent life. But alas, the flowers fall with the ripened grain: sometimes little children must die, although dearly would we like to keep them with us.

“Then the Reaper speaks: ‘Shall I have nothing fair and beautiful, must I have nothing but dry and bearded grain? I love these beautiful flowers; their fragrance is dear to me. Yet I will give them back again; some time you may see them again.’

“So Death looked at the little children with tears filling his kindly eyes. As they faded and drooped he kissed them gently and took them softly and sorrowfully into his arms. He was gathering these lovely innocents to take them to his Lord, where in Paradise they might be happy evermore, without any of the privations and sufferings that come to every one who grows up.

“As he wept, not for the little children, but for all who stay behind, he continued to speak smilingly through his tears to the sorrowing ones on earth:

“‘Christ needs these dear ones, these flowerets gay: to him they are tokens dear of the earth where once he played and sang on the hills of Judea. Can you not trust them to him who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God?” Have no fear; I am but moving them into the bright heavenly mansions, where they shall rest safely in the bosoms of the saints and angels.’

“And the mother, who loved them so, gave up her darling ones, for she saw, even through her tears, how happy they must be in their new home.

“‘O not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;’

it was a young and beautiful Angel, not the hideous Death in black robes and hood scarce hiding his bony head, that

“‘visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.’

“Does Death seem so terrible now? Although we must always see the vacant chair and know that a loved one has gone forever, can we not realize that it is we who suffer, and not the one who has been taken from among us? Is it not selfish to grieve?”

Shall we fear Death any more? When the parent has read the poem once more from beginning to end in silence, except as the soft words fall from his lips, will not the hearers feel inspired to be better and nobler boys and girls, men and women? Will darkness have more fear for them? Will they not then go to their rooms and lie down peacefully to sleep?

There are other poems for other hours. Some day when you wish a bit of fun with your children you will find humorous poems in many of the books. One is in Volume IV, on page 57. Nearly every stanza contains a “joke”: a pun, if you please, usually. Perhaps you and your children will find them all easily, and perhaps you will not. In the last stanza is the “joke” proper, the thing for which the rhymes were written. It is an old joke, surely enough, and you have seen others like it; but it is funny still and perhaps a little caustic. Not all men whom the world calls good are good beneath the surface. Perhaps you know of cases in which “the Dog it was that died.”

Another humorous poem to use in this connection is Echo (Volume III, page 286).

Between the two extremes mentioned above are selections for all moods and all kinds of people. The things to be remembered in reading with children are, that poetry must be understood to be appreciated; that it must be heard until the mind is trained to receive it through the eye instead of the ear; that it appeals to the feelings more than to the will; that it must be interpreted by the light of experience, and hence must be adapted to the age of the reader. A person would not read The Reaper and the Flowers at a dancing party, nor The Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog before a funeral.

Below are a few studies more complete and of different types.

The Brown Thrush

We find great charm in this short lyric, for its form is unusual, its music joyous and its sentiment fine. Three lines of four feet each, a line of three feet, two lines of two feet each, and one line of three feet make up each stanza. The accent in each foot is on the last syllable, but some of the feet are only two syllables long. It’s a merry meter. It scarcely can be read without stirring a rollicking melody in the ears of the listener. That’s the art in the poem. The sentiment is as fine as the music. “The world’s running over with joy! I’m as happy as happy can be.” If the little brown thrush keeps singing that song the heart of everyone who hears it will overflow with joy. But it would be easy, very easy indeed, to stop the joyous song of the thrush by meddling with the five pretty eggs, and when the thrush changed his happy song to harsh notes of fear and reproach, the light of joy would fade from our day as quickly as from his.

The Child’s World

The rhymes are all in couplets and are perfect. The stanzas, like paragraphs, indicate changes in thought. Its pleasing unity rests in the fact that it is all a child’s thoughts about the world. It is logical, a real leading up of thought to natural climax. The child begins with wonder and a sense of beauty around her. The world is great and wide and wonderful and beautiful. She thinks of the sea she has read about or seen and thinks of the wonderful water curling up in waves above the shore. To her the world is the land with the wonderful growing grass upon its broad breast, and this marks the end of her first thought—the great world is beautifully dressed.

Next as she sits on the brow of the hill and gazes over the lowland the breezes blow her hair about her face and her mind passes to the wonderful air that as wind shakes the trees, ripples the water, whirls the mills and sings through the trees on the tops of the hills.

Thought wanders on to the nodding wheat, the rivers, cliffs, and islands, to the cities and the people everywhere for thousands of miles. What is the effect of this vastness on the thought of a child? Can you not realize for yourself any clear night that you may gaze at the numberless stars in the arching skies? How small, how infinitely little are we in all the great universe! Have we the imagination to grasp the saving thought that comes so naturally into the clear mind of the child? Though I am so small, so insignificant, I can think and love, but the wonderful earth can not. A philosophy well worth keeping, is it not?

Seven Times One

Stanza 1. In England the daisy grows wild almost everywhere, a little, low plant which produces its heads of white, pink-tipped flowers from a rosette of leaves. In the United States we often see daisies in cultivation but they are nowhere native. The child is at her seventh birthday and has learned her multiplication table, the “sevens”. Nowadays in our schools the children do not have the drudgery of committing the long tables to memory as their grand-parents did. Our little friend thinks that as she has lived seven years that makes her “seven times one are seven.”

Stanza 2. One is so old at seven, so very old—why one can even write a letter. But now with the birthday lessons learned she can think of other things; for instance there are the lambs who play always, for they have no lessons to learn. They are not old and they are “only one times one,” not “seven times one,” which are seven.

Stanza 3. She has seen the moon when it was full and bright and gave a wondrous light, but now it is only a pale crescent in the sky and its light is failing. Certainly the moon is failing and not like the child improving each day.

Stanza 4. Occasionally the child has done wrong and been punished, and perhaps the moon has done something wrong way up there in heaven so that God has hidden its face. If that is true she hopes soon God will forgive the poor moon and allow it to shine once more with its silver light.

Stanza 5. Isn’t “velvet bee” a happy expression? Then the bee gathers the yellow pollen from the flowers, mixes and shapes it into little pellets and fastens them in golden balls on its thighs to carry into the hive where it will serve as “bee bread” to feed the young bees. In the wet places grow the marsh marigolds, or cowslips as they are sometimes called, bright golden flowers like the buttercups. To the bee and the cowslips the little child joyfully cries: “Give me your golden honey to hold, for I am seven years old and know what to do with it.”

Stanza 6. The columbine is the graceful little flower we so often hear called honeysuckle. Five deep curved nectar-bearing tubes project backward from the flower itself. By opening the blossom in the right way the child of fanciful ideas may see shapes that remind her of turtle doves.

The cuckoo-pint (by the way, the i is short as in pit) does not grow in the United States. It has spotted leaves, large and triangular, and the “bell” is an upright green cup in which stands a tall column, the “clapper.” It is called cuckoo-pint because it blossoms about the time the cuckoo returns to England. Our nearest approach to the flower is the “Jack-in-the-Pulpit” or Indian Turnip.

It is perfectly safe for the columbine to unfold its wrapper and the cuckoo-pint to toll its bell in the presence of a maiden so old. She will not destroy them.

Stanza 7. In the United States we have no wild linnet, though we sometimes hear song-birds called by that name. The English linnet is a little sparrow with striped back and a purple crown and breast. He resembles our purple finch and our redpoll. He is one of the famous songsters of the English lanes and fields.

No young lady of seven would be so thoughtless as to steal away the young linnets, so the old bird may freely point out the nest.

At what time of the year does the little girl’s birthday come?

The First Snowfall

“All-father”; God, the Father of all.

“Leaden”; gray and heavy, lead-colored.

“Arched”; curved.

“Deep-plunged woe”; a sorrow that plunged us deep in misery.

“Eyes that saw not.” His eyes were so filled with tears that he could not see “Mabel,” who is really his daughter Rose.

“My kiss was given to her sister.” He was thinking so deeply of his lost daughter, that it seemed almost as though he kissed the dead lips.

“Folded close.” The soft, downy snow made him think of a soft, warm covering for the form of his little one.

C. Form and Structure.

There are ten stanzas of four verses (lines) each, with the rhymes at the ends of the second and fourth verses only. The word snow is used four times in rhymes; the words rhyming with it are crow, below, woe and know. All the rhymes in the poem are perfect.

The meter is varied iambic trimeter. The first and third lines of each stanza have an added unaccented syllable, while the second and fourth have just three full feet. Anapestic feet are used freely to improve the music; in fact, they are nearly as numerous as the iambic feet.

The scansion of the first stanza may be indicated thus:

The-snow´|had-be-gun´|in-the-gloam´|ing
And-bus´|i-ly-all´|the-night´
Had-been-heap´|ing-field´|and-high´|way
With-a-si´|lence-deep´|and-white´

The scansion of the sixth stanza may be shown as follows:

Up-spoke´|our-own´|lit-tle-Ma´|bel
Say-ing-Fa´|ther-who-makes´|it-snow´
And-I-told´of-the-good´|All-Fa´|ther
Who cares´|for-us-here´|be-low´

They are musical stanzas, and the finely chosen words add much to the melody.

D. Sentiment. Lowell had a little daughter, Blanche, who died shortly before this poem was composed, so we may be sure that it was written from a full heart. He begins by giving us one of the most beautiful pictures of a snow-storm and of a snow-covered world that was ever written.

(Compare Lowell’s other description of winter to be found in the second part of The Vision of Sir Launfal and Whittier’s description in Snow-Bound.)

When he has made us feel the softness, gentleness and beauty of the snow and caused us to forget that it is cold and damp, he speaks of himself. We can see him sitting by the window looking out upon the beautiful pearl-clad world. He brings us right into his own presence and we can almost see the flocks of startled brown snowbirds whirling by. Not till now, when we are fully in sympathy with him, does he let us know that he has met with a deep, heart-breaking loss. Now we know what the soft flakes are hiding from sight, and our hearts go out with his.

Then his innocent little daughter comes in with the simple, commonplace question which he answers so touchingly. Can you not see him with his arm around the child, telling her of the care of the Father who loves little children so dearly? Yet his mind cannot free itself wholly from his first great sorrow, though he remembers that calmness, resignation, and gentle patience fell over his heart as the soft snow falls flake by flake from the leaden sky.

To the child, however, he speaks words that she will not fully understand until she, too, is grown and has met with sorrow: “It is only the merciful Father, darling, who can make fall that gentle comfort that heals and hides all suffering.”

Once more our hearts are wrung with sympathy when with tear-filled eyes he gives the little maiden by his side the kiss that was for the silent lips in sweet Auburn. The little one, kissing back, could not know the grief of her father’s heart or realize that another form than hers was clasped in his embrace.

How much better we know the great poet when he tells us his personal griefs in so touching a manner! How sweet is the lesson of patience and resignation when communicated in such a beautiful poem!

E. Beauty and Effectiveness in Phrasing. Where in literature will you find more beautiful phrases, more effective figures, than abound in this poem? Notice particularly the following, and try to determine why each is remarkable:

“With a silence deep and white.”

“Ermine too dear for an earl.”

“Stiff rails softened to swan’s down.”

“The noiseless work of the sky.”

“the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow.”

“The scar of our deep-plunged woe.”

“Folded close in deepening snow.”

F. Conclusion. The First Snowfall is one of the most perfect poems in our language. In beauty of composition, of music, of sentiment, and in deep religious feeling it can scarcely be excelled. Be guarded how you teach it; treat it reverently. Try to cause the children to love it, to wish to memorize it. If you see that you are not securing these results, leave the poem and take up something else. It is almost a sin to spoil it for any person.

The Potato

Origin of the Opal

The opal is a beautiful stone which seen at different angles and in different lights seems to glow with various colors. The polished surface may seem, as you first look at it, to be only a milky white. Turn it a little and it glows a bright flame color with green lights round the margin. Turned a little more it shows violet and silver. Other shades mingle with these, all coming and going as light and position vary. A fine opal is a wonderfully brilliant precious stone.

The idea of the poem, too, is beautiful. Here is a transparent dewdrop; in it is the flame of the last ray of sun. As the drop lies in the violet it takes that color, and steals from the rose her delicate shades. From the sky it draws the blue, from a leaf its green and silver. When all these colors have been taken in, the drop is congealed, and imprisoned in its heart are the fiery flame, the rich violet, the rose tints, the skyey blue, the delicate green and the gleaming silver. This is the opal.

The Barefoot Boy

According to the old Greeks, there lay far to the west, in the ocean, a wonderful island where were kept, under the guard of a gruesome dragon, the beautiful golden apples which Gaea gave as a wedding present to Zeus. The Hesperides were the three daughters of Night, who ruled the guardian dragon. These golden apples, then, came to be known as the apples of Hesperides. When Hercules in his madness had slain his three children he was condemned to do whatever his cousin Eurystheus demanded for his purification. His tasks came to be known as the Twelve Labors of Hercules, and the eleventh was to obtain the golden apples from the Hesperides. He accomplished this task among the others, but the apples were subsequently restored. To the barefoot boy the apples of his New England tree were as choice as the golden ones of the Greek myth.

Do not fail to see the exquisite picture painted by these beautiful descriptive lines on pages 5 and 6.

“O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swing fold.”

The Bugle Song

Three pairs of youthful lovers have been climbing above a lovely glade wherein is pitched the tent of the Princess. As they climbed, “Many a little hand glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, and many a light foot shone like a jewel set in the dark crag.” They wound about the cliffs, and out and in among the copses, striking off pieces of various rocks and chattering over their stony names, until they reached the summit and the sun grew broader as he set and threw his rosy light upon the heights above the glade. When in this poetic vein Tennyson has described the scene, he throws in The Bugle Song without any comment.

We will understand it better if we paraphrase it briefly. Let us imagine ourselves standing on some peak and looking over a scene lighted by the setting sun.

“The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story.”

The light in long quivering beams is thrown across the lakes, and a wild cataract, made glorious by the golden light, leaps down a neighboring precipice. At this moment, somewhere in the distance we hear a bugle which sets wild echoes flying in every direction about us. As these echoes die away,

“O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going,”

there comes reflected to us from cliff and abrupt promontory the faint sound of the little horns of Fairyland. To them the purple glens reply in echoes gently dying into silence. O love, those echoes die away in the rich sky, and faint into nothingness on hill and field and river; but echoes of our thoughts, our feelings, of ourselves, roll on from one soul to another and grow in power forever and forever.

The music in the lyric is dependent upon the choice of words and the arrangement of words. The words are chosen because of their meaning and because of the sounds which compose them. They are so arranged that the sequence is melodious and that the accents fall where needed to perfect the meter. The first three lines are perfectly smooth and regular, but the fourth is an abrupt change; “And the wild cataract leaps in glory” suggests power and strong interrupted motion. The last two lines of the stanza are somewhat irregular in meter, and the double repetition of the last word suggests the time elapsing while the echoes are flying back and forth between the surrounding cliffs, growing fainter and fainter with each repetition. In reading we show this: “Blow, bugle,” is the original sound; we pause for the echoes to answer, “dying, dying, dying.”

In the second stanza the poet has selected words in which the vowels have thin and delicate sounds:

“how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!”

So soft are the echoes that they suggest to the poet the delicate refrain from the musical instruments of fairies, and he describes it in the poetic phrase,

“The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!”

The meter of the last stanza, which is more irregular than the others, we can indicate as follows:

O love´|they die´|in yon´|rich sky´
They faint´|on hill´|or field´|or riv´|er:
Our ech´|oes roll´|from soul´|to soul´,
And grow´|for ev´|er and´|for ev´|er
Blow, bu´|gle, blow´|—set´|the wild ech´|oes fly´|ing,
And an´|swer, ech´|oes, an´|swer, dy´|ing, dy´|ing, dy´|ing.

In the next to the last line there are five feet and one added syllable, if we consider that the pause which we naturally make before the word set is equivalent to a syllable. In the last line there are six feet with an added syllable. This additional foot which appears in the last line of every stanza is introduced to imitate the lingering death of the echoes.

After this study of the poem it should be read several times aloud in an effort to bring out the music; the first stanza in the pitch of ordinary conversation, with force in the fourth line and lingering intonations in the last line. The pitch of the second stanza should be higher, and it will be easily attained because of the predominance of the thin vowels. The third stanza calls for a pitch lower than the first and a slowness and solemnity of movement quite in contrast to the moderate rate of the first and the liveliness and gaiety of the second. It will be seen in these readings that there is an overlying melody in the stanzas, quite distinct from the rhythm that depends upon the meter, and that in the reading the meter naturally falls subservient to the melody of the phrases. In fact, in a poem of this kind the meter should be forgotten in the reading, which should give itself wholly to bringing out the meaning expressively, and to making the voice harmonize with the rich music of the lines.

An analysis of The Bugle Song will seem superfluous to the cultivated reader, but if these suggestions help the learner to see something new, to feel more acutely, to realize beauty more abundantly, their purpose is accomplished.

The Petrified Fern

“Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, so many years, in fact, that none of us can tell how many, somewhere in a valley, there grew a beautiful little fern, green and slender. It was as tender and delicate as the ones you can find in the woods now, and grew in just such a shady place. When the breezes crept down under the trees they waved the fern gracefully about so that it gently touched the tall rushes that grew above it and cast little shadows on the moss at its feet. Now and then a playful sunbeam darted through the crevices in the leaves and found the fern, and at night drops of dew stole silently in and made a glistening crown upon its head. But there were no children then to find it. It was long, long ago, when the earth was young, and nowhere on its broad surface was a single human child.

“Out in the silent sea fishes larger than any that can be found now were swimming about. Across the plains of the earth animals of wonderful shapes and enormous size stalked clumsily and found their way into stately forests. No man ever saw growing such trees as waved their giant branches over the earth, for then Nature made things on a grander scale than she does now. The little fern, however, was wild and simple, and lived in its home unnoticed and uncared for by any of the great creatures or the mighty trees. Still it grew on modestly in its own sweet way, spreading its fronds and becoming more beautiful every day.

“Then suddenly one day the earth heaved up its mighty rocks and threw them about in every direction. The strong currents of the ocean broke loose and flooded over the land. They drowned the animals, moved the plain, tore down the haughty woods and cast the great trunks about like straw. They broke the little fern from its slender stalk, and burying it deep in soft moist clay, hid it safely away.

“Many, many long centuries have passed since the day the useless little fern was lost. Millions of human beings have come upon the earth, have lived and been happy, have suffered, passed away, and have been forgotten. The soft, moist clay that clasped the fern hardened into rock and kept safely in its strong prison the delicate little frond.

“Then one day, not long ago, a thoughtful man studying Nature’s secrets far and wide found up in a valley where a stream had worn a deep fissure, a queer little rock. When he looked at it, he saw running over it a strange design, as though some fairy with its magic pencil had drawn the outline of a fern with every vein distinct, showing in every line the life of the long-lost plant. It was the fern I told you about.

“Isn’t it strange that so delicate a thing as a fern could be kept clear and fine through all those thousands of years when the earth was changing and growing, and then finally be thrown up where a man could find it and read its whole history? The poet, Mary Bolles Branch, saw the little fern and wrote the beautiful lines which I now want to read to you.”

(Here read the poem, The Petrified Fern, found in Journeys, Volume VII, page 77.)

There are very few words or expressions in the poem that will require any explanation. At the end of the first stanza the phrase “keeping holiday” means that as there were no human beings on the earth, there was no real work being done.

At the end of the first line in the second stanza the word main is an old term that means ocean.

The last two lines of the third stanza are meant to show how different life has been on the planet since man came. Until he appeared there was no real agony; there was pain, for animals can suffer, but it takes a mind and soul to know agony. Man cannot live except with suffering and at a bitter cost.

Until the last two lines of the fourth stanza are reached the poem is merely a beautiful and musical narrative. The last two lines are the thought that comes to the poet when she considers the history of the little fern. It is thinking such thoughts as this that make the poet different from ordinary men. You and I might see the impression of the fern and think it beautiful, but its beauty would not suggest to us the comforting idea that

* * * “God hides some souls away
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.”

Our own poet Longfellow, in The Builders, voices a similar thought when he says:

“Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”

After you have presented these thoughts, read the poem again to the children. Call attention to its musical structure, its simplicity, the beauty of its expressions, and then read it a third time. It is one of those beautiful things which may well be committed to memory.

It will be found very helpful, too, for the children to write the story in prose and try to bring out the meaning. Let them use freely the words of the poem, but a different arrangement of words, so that there shall be left no trace of rhyme or meter in their prose.