Poets and Poetry
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Poets and Poetry’
John Gay reflects that in matters of friendship, quality is preferable to quantity.
This little Fable may look like one of Aesop’s ancient morality tales but it was composed by English poet and dramatist John Gay, remembered today for his Beggar’s Opera of 1728. Gay was one of those investors caught out by the South Sea Bubble, and discovered that in Georgian London being popular with the rich and famous was by no means a guarantee against hardship.
A destitute and friendless farmer, turned from the tradesman’s entrance, tries his luck at the front door.
This poem was composed by the Revd Mr Thomas Moss, minister of Brierley Hill and Trentham in Staffordshire, and included in a collection of verses that he published anonymously in 1769. Admired for its pathos, the poem became a standard for children to memorise, in the hope of sowing the seeds of charitable feelings at an early age; consequently, it was also much parodied.
William Wordsworth comes back from France and realises with a shock what his own country has become.
In 1802, William Wordsworth returned from a brief trip across the Channel and was suddenly struck by the ugly noise of London. He was not singing the praises of post-revolutionary Paris, where ‘quiet desolation’ reigned. But England’s complacent wealth, her vanity and parade, were no better, for he could detect little happiness in them, and no moral fibre.
A much-loved children’s poem, even if most of us struggle to remember more than a few lines.
Sarah Hale was an American novelist, poet, magazine editor and literary critic, who campaigned vigorously against slavery and for the employment and education of women (she helped found Vassar College). A great believer in women as ‘God’s appointed agent of morality’, Hale saw the homemaker as crucial to the happiness of the nation. Her collection of Poems for Our Children (1830) included ‘Mary’s Lamb’.
Like the ideal Christian, the ideal teacher is one who spreads joy in everything, great or small.
Alexander Haddow, who taught at Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow, between the wars, was known for his conviction that poetry-reading must bring joy or it must not be attempted. “I would have only those who wish to read, try,” he said, “and I would have you deal gently with all who really try.” In On the Teaching of Poetry (1925) Haddow went so far as to liken the vocation of the teacher to that of the Christian.
A charming children’s rhyme that is also a test of the clearest speaker’s diction.
Sir Edward Abbott Parry had recently been appointed one of her majesty Queen Victoria’s judges when he published Katawampus (1895), a book of tales and rhymes for young children. It all began, it seems, when Pater (Latin for father), in despair over his fractious children, took a Christmas Day dip in the sea... but before telling that extraordinary story, Pater gave these little verses from his ‘book of rhymes’.