Sometime at the start of this year I picked up one of the kids poetry books - ones that we kept the poems we had memorized. I realize how much I missed this part of our days.
Reading through a poet over a term just wasn't as much fun as memorizing three poems and living with them.
I suspect a couple of trips into town and the kids playing with the lines and the squares and being careful of bears had an effect as well. (Courtesy of Robert Louis Stevenson). Poetry just isn't the same if it doesn't become part of the everyday. So yes morning poetry memorization has come back - and we're enjoying Longfellow.
We started with the children's hour - imagery of kids climbing over Dad's or Granddad's chair at the end of the day.
The current poem is a little more subdued, a little deeper, but I've enjoyed it and hoped that with its powerful imagery the kids have too. We've been memorizing the "Village Blacksmith".
We added in the following verses in the last two days ;
Toiling,---rejoicing,---sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
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