Through a child's recitation, I think the meaning of Longfellow's poem; "The Children's Hour" would be a little different. This would be a poem that a child would pick to recite because it has a constant rhyme scheme and it is also a little shorter in length. The length would matter to a child, if they were able to pick what they could recite, because it is less to remember.
This poem would be initially enticing to a child because it mentions children in the title. It would be equally enticing because it contains a rhyme scheme that could easily be made "sing song" by a child. This "sing song" quality would also make it easier for the child to remember, thus making recitation easier. I think a child could relate to some of the lines like, "I hear in the chamber above me/The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet." If a child was to recite these lines, however, I think they would see it as a joyful type of childhood playing. Whereas, within the context of the poem it is a very weird thing; it is weird because this man is keeping children in his chamber. By having a child recite this poem it changes the context dramatically, because a child would not understand that the "Children's Hour" is not a good thing at all. I did not totally understand this element until we talked about it in class, so I would hope that a child would not fully understand the concept either, thus making the poem more light-hearted and "sing song" in tone.
Furthermore, a child would understand more of the words in this poem because they are less complex than some of the other poems by Longfellow. Depending on the age, the fourth stanza would be particularly easy for a child to relate to. "A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes/They are plotting and planning together/To take me by surprise." This sounds like a bunch of children playing a game or planning a party and I think that is what a child reciting it would see it as, and this greatly changes the meaning of the poem, because this stanza is not intended to have a happy tone to it but I think a child would view it that way.
Stanza six shows how toys and presents mark the child’s life rather than love and affection.
Christopher Morley’s poem “Nursery Rhymes for The Tender-Hearted” is a simple poem it is a parody to the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. This poem is about a roach that is in the house. The speaker is the roach he is telling everything that happened while he was running and everything in the pantry. In “Nursery Rhymes for The Tender-Hearted” there was a roach who was very sneaky, fast and smart.
In the essay I hope to explain why I picked each poem and to suggest
Imagine yourself lying in the sun, feeling the warmth on your skin, when a cloud cover the sun and you feel the sudden coldness that you can seem to shake? The feeling is similar when you love someone very much but they don’t return the feeling. The band, 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS), in their song, If You Don’t Know, sings about how a singer is in love with a person. The person seems to not be sure if they are in love with the singer, and the the singer wishes for the person to let them go. The couple that 5SOS wrote about was in love at one time, but the person is slowly falling out of love with the singer.
The idea of the innocence having been created or forced to exist is lost as the poem focuses on the children and how innocent they are. This stands out particularly in the second stanza which uses end rhyme and repetition to underline just how many children seemed to be going into the church. It is also in that same stanza that the children are referred to as lambs, which is a common symbol for innocence. It is not simply the multitudes of children, but the multitudes of the innocent that have been gathered. ...
The poem contains the central idea that many of these children never understood what home really means. In Native American culture the people venerate earth and it is referred to as mother nature which we see in the poem. The rails cut right through their home but they don’t view them like the average person. They view the tracks as if they are scars across mother earths face and her face is the Native American’s homeland. She is scarred for eternity but she is perfect in their dreams. This symbolism is ironic because the children try to reach home using the railroad that ruined natural life for them and many other Native Americans. In the second stanza the speaker says “The worn-down welts of ancient punishments lead back and fourth” (15-16). Which can be talking about the marks on the children’s bodies after getting caught while running away. But the “word-down welts” can also symbolize the welts that were put on mother nature throughout history. The last five lines of the poem sums up the symbol of hope through their memories and dreams. The last line of the poem says, “the spines of names and leaves.” (20-24). The “spines” symbolize the physical strength of the children and their ability to maintain hope individually “names”, and for their tribe
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
Child and Insect is a lovely poem about the disappointment in life, which a little boy is just running into and starting to realize. Robert Druce has portrayed a simple but very appealing image of a very humane situation in a child’s life. The writer has delivered his massage to the readers trough a game of the little boy and the grasshopper. Child and Insect is a poem filled with great a variety of literary terms such as alliteration, symbolism, onomatopoeia, repetition, comparison, contrast, personification and run on lines which work all together in order to reveal three different stages in the poem characterized by a drastic change in the mood and the tone of the writing.
To being with, the poem “The Lamb” by William Blake fits into the category Songs of Innocence by using simplistic views and easy language. This poem is written using very simple words and English along with a rhyming scheme. For example, “Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing wooly and bright, Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice!” (Blake, The Lamb, page 784, lines 5-8) This poem is written for children since it uses a comforting tone and an almost soothing voice. From these examples it is for an educated reason that this poem shall be placed in Songs of Innocence. Due to the fact that this poem is made for the warm hearted, and for young children this poem shows the innocence of the lamb in its entirety. Th...
In both poems, disputes and disagreements were evident. For instance, the poem “Rites of Passage” primarily focused on what a mother observed during her son’s birthday party. Olds observations centered on how young boys actions result into violence when dealing with one another. The set of boys who ranged in the age of six or seven, lacked a sense of innocence and
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and the well to do aristocracy.
The speaker in the poem uses images to help to support the theme. For example the statement that "sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother's face" displays the inability of the children to relate the dilemma to themselves, something that the speaker has learned later on with time and experience. In this poem, the speaker is an old woman, and she places a high emphasis on the burden of years from which she speaks by saying "old woman, / or nearly so, myself." "I know now that woman / and painting and season are almost one / and all beyond saving by children." clearly states that the poem is not written for the amusement of children but somebody that has reached the speaker's age, thus supporting the idea of the theme that children cannot help or understand her or anybody of her age. In addition, when the speakers describes the kids in the classroom as "restless on hard chairs" and "caring little for picture or old age" we can picture them in our minds sitting, ready to leave the class as soon as possible, unwilling and unable to understand the ethics dilemma or what the speaker is feeling.
William Blake wrote many poems during his lifetime. He had a set of poems called The Songs of Innocence and also a set called The songs of Experience. This paper is focusing on five poems from the Songs of Innocence, which are: “The Shepherd,” “The Echoing Green,” The Little Black Boy,” “The Blossom,” and “Laughing Song.”
Rollin, Lucy. Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytic Reading of Nursery Rhymes. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1992. HSU PR.976.R6
as a separate group to the "infant" in the poem as he refers to them