Transcriber’s Note

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Poetry for
Children

BY
Charles and
Mary Lamb

ILLUSTRATED BY
WINIFRED GREEN
With a prefatory note by
ISRAEL GOLLANCZ

PUBLISHED BY J M DENT & C^o

To the
Gentle Reader

As often as I pass a little Blue-coat boy I gaze upon him lovingly: I reverence the quaint vision of a bygone age called up by the long blue gaberdine, the red leathern belt, the yellow stockings—a quaint monkish figure still to be seen in crowded London streets, still adding to their picturesqueness and ever-varying charm.

You, too, dear Reader, have yourself probably asked the meaning of the strange sight, as you have passed one of these English lads so strangely attired. Perhaps you have been shown the famous old school, in the midst of the bustle of London, surrounded by ugly warehouses, offices, and shops; and you have seen the effigy of the Founder, “that godly and royal child, King Edward the Sixth, the flower of the Tudor name—the young flower that was untimely cropped as it began to fill our land with its early odours—the boy-patron of boys—the serious and holy child who walked with Cranmer and Ridley.”

Alas, London is no longer to be the home of these boys, and the cloisters of the Old Grey Friars will soon moulder away, when the merry noise of sports and revels cease to awaken them to life.

As I looked through the bars the other day watching the boys at their games, a strange fancy came to me. I thought I saw a pale and studious “Grecian” (as they call the head boys of the school), and walking at his side, with glittering eyes full of wonderment, was a younger lad—a boy with crisply curling black hair, and with ruddy brown complexion, and in his look so much lovableness and trustfulness, that I felt myself envying the elder lad, whose hand rested so affectionately on the shoulder of his friend. I drew near to listen to their talk. The thoughtful Grecian was discoursing learnedly yet so sweetly about some deep matter of philosophy: it seemed somewhat beyond the younger boy, but he listened quietly, rapt in admiration. Suddenly the school-bell sounded. “Hurry on, Charles! ‘’Mid deepest meditation sounds the knell.’ That’s how your good old Elizabethans would put it. We’ll have another talk after supper.” “I—I’ve n—not h—h—had o—one t—t—talk y—yet, S ... T ... C,” stammered the other in reply: a painful contrast to the sublime eloquence that flowed from his companion.

The noise of the bell and scampering of the boys soon made me realise that Fancy had led me back a hundred years and more, and had given me a glimpse of the boyhood of two famous Englishmen, who have added glory to their ancient school—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher, and Charles Lamb, essayist and critic, the best beloved of all the good and great men whose writings are dear to us.

Some day you will read the story of the lives of these two men, and you will love their books,—the weird and fairy poetry of Coleridge, recalling a dreamy youth reared amid the woodlands of Devon—the genial and sweet essays of Lamb, so full of gentle humour, and kindliness, and humanity, so rich in tender thoughts concerning all his fellow-creatures in the great city where he was born and bred, which he loved passionately. To London he had given “his heart and his love in childhood and in boyhood,” and throughout his life his heart was filled with “fulness of joy at the multitudinous scenes of life in the crowded streets of ever dear London.”

Charles Lamb’s Essays are among the greatest of our treasures, but even more beautiful than his writings is the record of his noble life—a life of saintly self-sacrifice, cheerfully devoted to the guardianship of a lonely sister, whose girlhood would have been spent in loveless solitude but for her brother’s love. Mary Lamb’s tragic story (too sad to be told here) was illumined by the light of this brotherly love which shone forth when the world was very dark and gloomy.

Mary Lamb had something of her brother’s gift of writing; it was she indeed to whom you owe many of the Tales of Shakespeare you are so fond of. They loved children, and they loved Shakespeare, and their stories from Shakespeare have been and are still read by boys and girls all the world over. They wrote, too, a whole collection of Poetry for Children, and here also Mary’s share was much greater than her brother’s. “Mine,” wrote Charles, “are but one-third in quantity of the whole.” ... “Perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid. Many parents would not have found so many.” This collection of “Poetry for Children” in two small volumes, was so much liked by the children that all the copies were soon bought up, and Charles Lamb himself could not get a copy, when later in life he sought one far and wide. So rare is the book now that only one or two copies are known to exist, and even the British Museum does not possess these precious little volumes. A small selection of the poems are now once again offered to boys and girls: if this prove welcome, more will follow. They are simple little poems such as children should care for, and even grown-up people, for whom they were never intended, cherish every word written by Mary and Charles Lamb, because they know how much goodness and humility dwelt in their souls. If there were any wish to be learned and to explain how they came to write these verses, one would have to tell you something about other writers who were then living and writing, more especially about Lamb’s friend “S. T. C.,” who, together with an even greater poet, William Wordsworth, had published ten years before, in 1798, a small volume of simple English poems, which was destined to have the greatest influence on English poetry for long years to come. In that volume Wordsworth first printed the sweet little poem I am sure you know, called We Are Seven, and Coleridge, “the inspired charity boy,” as Charles Lamb called him, gave the world the magical ballad of The Ancient Mariner. One verse from this ballad ought to be printed on the title-page of this little book of poems by Mary and Charles Lamb:—

“He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.”

I. G.

CONTENTS

THE
FIRST TOOTH

I

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 preferr’d

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 watch’d

Till it burst its shell new-hatch’d

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 pass’d

’Tis not fitting this should last

Longer than our infant days;

A child is fed with milk and praise.

THE BOY AND THE
SKYLARK
A FABLE

II

“A wicked action fear to do,

When you are by yourself; for though

You think you can conceal it,

A little bird that’s in the air

The hidden trespass shall declare

And openly reveal it.”

Richard this saying oft had heard,

Until the sight of any bird

Would set his heart a-quaking;

He saw a host of winged spies

For ever o’er him in the skies,

Note of his actions taking.

This pious precept, while it stood

In his remembrance, kept him good

When nobody was by him;

For though no human eye was near,

Yet Richard still did wisely fear

The little bird should spy him.

But best resolves will sometimes sleep;

Poor frailty will not always keep

From that which is forbidden;

And Richard one day, left alone,

Laid hands on something not his own,

And hoped the theft was hidden.

His conscience slept a day or two,

As it is very apt to do,

When we with pain suppress it;

And though at times a slight remorse

Would raise a pang, it had not force

To make him yet confess it.

When on a day, as he abroad

Walk’d by his mother, in their road

He heard a skylark singing;

Smit with the sound, a flood of tears

Proclaim’d the superstitious fears

His inmost bosom wringing.

His mother, wondering, saw him cry,

And fondly ask’d the reason why?

Then Richard made confession,

And said, he fear’d the little bird

He singing in the air had heard

Was telling his transgression.

The words which Richard spoke below,

As sounds by nature upwards go,

Were to the skylark carried:

The airy traveller with surprise,

To hear his sayings, in the skies

On his mid-journey tarried.

His anger then the bird express’d:

“Sure, since the day I left the nest,

I ne’er heard folly utter’d

So fit to move a skylark’s mirth,

As what this little son of earth

Hath in his grossness mutter’d.

“Dull fool! to think we sons of air

On man’s low actions waste a care,

His virtues or his vices;

Or soaring on the summer gales

That we should stoop to carry tales

Of him or his devices!

“Mistaken fool! man needs not us

His secret merits to discuss,

Or spy out his transgression;

When once he feels his conscience stirr’d,

That voice within him is the bird

That moves him to confession.”

THE RAINBOW

III

After the tempest in the sky,

How sweet yon rainbow to the eye!

Come, my Matilda, now while some

Few drops of rain are yet to come,

In this honeysuckle bower

Safely shelter’d from the shower,

We may count the colours o’er.

Seven there are, there are no more;

Each in each so finely blended,

Where they begin, or where are ended,

The finest eye can scarcely see.

A fixed thing it seems to be;

But, while we speak, see how it glides

Away, and now observe it hides

Half of its perfect arch; now we

Scarce any part of it can see.

What is colour? If I were

A natural philosopher,

I would tell you what does make

This meteor every colour take;

But an unlearned eye may view

Nature’s rare sights, and love them too.

Whenever I a rainbow see,

Each precious tint is dear to me;

For every colour find I there

Which flowers, which fields, which ladies wear;

My favourite green, the grass’s hue,

And the fine deep violet-blue,

And the pretty pale blue-bell,

And the rose I love so well;

All the wondrous variations

Of the tulip, pinks, carnations;

This woodbine here, both flower and leaf;

’Tis a truth that’s past belief,

That every flower and every tree

And every living thing we see,

Every face which we espy,

Every cheek and every eye,

In all their tints, in every shade,

Are from the rainbow’s colours made.

QUEEN ORIANA’S
DREAM

IV

On a bank with roses shaded,

Whose sweet scent the violets aided

Violets whose breath alone

Yields but feeble smell or none,

(Sweeter bed Jove ne’er reposed on

When his eyes Olympus closed on,)

While o’erhead six slaves did hold

Canopy of cloth o’ gold,

And two more did music keep

Which might Juno lull to sleep,

Oriana who was queen

To the mighty Tamerlane,

That was lord of all the land

Between Thrace and Samarcand,

While the noon-tide fervour beam’d,

Mus’d herself to sleep, and dream’d.

Thus far, in magnific strain,

A young poet soothed his vein,

But he had nor prose nor numbers

To express a princess’ slumbers.—

Youthful Richard had strange fancies,

Was deep versed in old romances,

And could talk whole hours upon

The great Cham and Prester John,—

Tell the field in which the Sophi

From the Tartar won a trophy—

What he read with such delight of

Thought he could as easily write of;

But his over-young invention

Kept not pace with brave intention.

Twenty suns did rise and set,

And he could no further get;

But, unable to proceed,

Made a virtue out of need;

And his labours wiselier deem’d of,

Did omit what the queen dream’d of.

THE SISTER’S
EXPOSTULATION
ON THE BROTHER’S
LEARNING LATIN

V

Shut these odious books up, brother;

They have made you quite another

Thing from what you used to be:

Once you liked to play with me,

Now you leave me all alone,

And are so conceited grown

With your Latin, you’ll scarce look

Upon any English book.

We had used on winter eves

To con over Shakespeare’s leaves,

Or on Milton’s harder sense

Exercise our diligence,

And you would explain with ease

The obscurer passages;

Find me out the prettiest places,

The poetic turns and graces,

Which, alas! now you are gone,

I must puzzle out alone;

And oft miss the meaning quite,

Wanting you to set me right.

All this comes since you’ve been under

Your new master. I much wonder

What great charm it is you see

In those words, musa, musæ;

Or in what do they excel

Our word song. It sounds as well

To my fancy as the other.

Now believe me, dearest brother,

I would give my finest frock

And my cabinet and stock

Of new playthings, every toy,

I would give them all with joy,

Could I you returning see

Back to English and to me.

THE BROTHER’S
REPLY

VI

Sister, fie for shame, no more!

Give this ignorant babble o’er,

Nor, with little female pride,

Things above your sense deride.

Why this foolish underrating

Of my first attempts at Latin?

Know you not each thing we prize

Does from small beginnings rise?

’Twas the same thing with your writing

Which you now take such delight in.

First you learnt the down-stroke line,

Then the hairstroke thin and fine,

Then a curve and then a better,

Till you came to form a letter;

Then a new task was begun,

How to join them two in one;

Till you got (these first steps pass’d)

To your fine text-hand at last.

So, though I at first commence

With the humble accidence,

And my study’s course affords

Little else as yet but words,

I shall venture in a while

At construction, grammar, style,

Learn my syntax, and proceed

Classic authors next to read,

Such as wiser, better, make us,

Sallust, Phædrus, Ovid, Flaccus:

All the poets with their wit,

All the grave historians writ,

Who the lives and actions show

Of men famous long ago;

Even their very sayings giving

In the tongue they used when living.

Think not I shall do that wrong

Either to my native tongue,

English authors to despise,

Or those books which you so prize;