iF Read online

  Allie Esiri read Modern and Medieval Languages at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge. An actress from 1989–2000, she appeared in productions from Twelfth Night for the English Shakespeare Company to Sharpe’s Battle for ITV, and then worked as a freelance writer for publications including The New York Times T Magazine. She is married and has three children (a mini focus group).

  Rachel Kelly was educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School and then at Oxford University, where she read Modern History. She worked at Vogue after entering the magazine’s Talent Contest and later joined The Times in London, where she worked as a journalist for ten years. She is married with five children aged between eight and seventeen and has always loved poetry.

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  Introductions copyright © Allie Esiri and Rachel Kelly, 2012

  Illustrations copyright © Natasha Law

  Please see page 276 for poetry acknowledgements

  The moral rights of the authors and illustrator have been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 85786 557 1

  eISBN 978 0 85786 558 8

  Typeset in Minion Pro and Plebeya Pro

  by Sharon McTeir, Creative Publishing Services

  This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2012

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  GROWING UP

  I Want to Know by John Drinkwater

  There Was a Little Girl by H.W. Longfellow

  Where Did You Come From, Baby Dear? by George MacDonald

  The Leader by Roger McGough

  My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson

  The Lost Doll by Charles Kingsley

  Infant Joy by William Blake

  Little Boy Blue by Eugene Field

  Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg

  maggie and milly and molly and may by ee cummings

  Little Brother’s Secret by Katherine Mansfield

  Homework! Oh, Homework! by Jack Prelutsky

  Love Between Brothers and Sisters by Isaac Watts

  The Pleiades by Amy Lowell

  The Children’s Hour by H.W. Longfellow

  The First Tooth by Charles and Mary Lamb

  It Was Long Ago by Eleanor Farjeon

  I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood

  All the World’s a Stage by William Shakespeare

  Brother and Sister by Lewis Carroll

  HUMOUR AND NONSENSE

  The Song of Mr Toad by Kenneth Grahame

  Old Mother Hubbard by Sarah Catherine Martin

  The King’s Breakfast by A.A. Milne

  Too Many Daves by Dr Seuss

  Poetry Jump-Up by John Agard

  Down Vith Children! By Roald Dahl

  The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

  What is an Epigram? by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Poor Old Lady by Anon

  To a Friend in Search of Rural Seclusion by Christopher Logue

  Dear Mum by Brian Patten

  Talking Turkeys!! by Benjamin Zephaniah

  Macavity the Mystery Cat by T.S. Eliot

  Amelia Mixed the Mustard by A.E. Housman

  There Was an Old Man on the Border by Edward Lear

  The Dong with a Luminous Nose by Edward Lear

  Sir Humphry Davy by Edmund Clerihew Bentley

  Kenneth by Wendy Cope

  True Wit and A Couplet by Alexander Pope

  Fish’s Night Song by Christian Morgenstern

  A Calligramme by Guillaume Apollinaire

  On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan

  The Duel by Eugene Field

  Humpty Dumpty’s Recitation by Lewis Carroll

  Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

  TELL ME A TALE

  Matilda, Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death by Hilaire Belloc

  The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt

  The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning

  The Little Dog’s Day by Rupert Brooke

  A Smuggler’s Song by Rudyard Kipling

  Waltzing Matilda by Banjo Paterson

  The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies by Anon

  A Visit from St Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore

  Sweet Polly Oliver by Anon

  The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

  Hunter Trials by John Betjeman

  The Inchcape Rock by Robert Southey

  The Three Fishers by Charles Kingsley

  Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

  Lochnivar by Sir Walter Scott

  The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Hat by Carol Ann Duffy

  The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

  MAGIC

  The Little Elf-man by John Kendrick Bangs

  Silver by Walter de la Mare

  The Fairies by William Allingham

  Over Hill, Over Dale by William Shakespeare

  Fairy Days by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Double, Double, Toil and Trouble by William Shakespeare

  The Forsaken Merman by Matthew Arnold

  Sabrina Fair by John Milton

  The Elf Singing by William Allingham

  The Fly-Away Horse by Eugene Field

  FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE

  Us Two by A.A. Milne

  Rainbows by Kahlil Gibran

  An Old English Riddle by Anon

  The Duck and the Kangaroo by Edward Lear

  The Girl with Many Eyes by Tim Burton

  The Arrow and the Song by H.W. Longfellow

  Sally in Our Alley by Henry Carey

  Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë

  He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

  Friendship by Elizabeth Jennings

  Bright Star! by John Keats

  She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon, Lord Byron

  Song: Why So Pale and Wan? by Sir John Suckling

  A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

  How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

  Love by George Herbert

  La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats

  The Chilterns by Rupert Brooke

  We’ll Go No More A-Roving by George Gordon, Lord Byron

  ANIMALS, NATURE AND SEASONS

  Ducks’ Ditty by Kenneth Grahame

  Mary’s Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale

  Pussy can sit by the fire and sing by Rudyard Kipling

  The Cow by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Snow Flakes by Emily Dickinson

  The Crocodile by Lewis Carroll

  The African Lion by A.E. Housman

  The Cricket by Kobayashi Issa

  Amulet by Ted Hughes

  The Donkey by G.K. Chesterton

  The Lamb by William Blake

  The Tyger by William Blake

  The Rainbow by Christina Rossetti

  Sea Fever by John Masefield

  A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky by Lewis Carroll

  Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

  A Boy’s Song by James Hogg

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats

  Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth

  The Trees by Philip Larkin

  Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

  Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

  Robin Redbreast by William Allingham

  Trees by Sara Coleridge

  WAR, HISTORY AND DEATH

  Remember, Remember the Fifth of November by Anon

  Here Dead We
Lie by A.E. Housman

  An Epitaph by John Dryden

  Rhyme to Remember Kings and Queens by Anon

  Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

  Casabianca by Felicia Hemans

  Does It Matter? by Siegfried Sassoon

  Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

  My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling

  The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

  St Crispian’s Day by William Shakespeare

  Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

  An Incident of the French Camp by Robert Browning

  The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Battle of Blenheim by Robert Southey

  Jerusalem by William Blake

  O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

  Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes

  The Eve of Waterloo by George Gordon, Lord Byron

  The Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key

  Death Be Not Proud by John Donne

  Requiescat by Matthew Arnold

  Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  LESSONS FOR LIFE

  Little Things by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

  Our Saviour’s Golden Rule by Isaac Watts

  The Frog by Hilaire Belloc

  The Way through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

  Timothy Winters by Charles Causley

  ‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson

  If by Rudyard Kipling

  A Farewell by Charles Kingsley

  Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden

  Up-hill by Christina Rossetti

  Invictus by W.E. Henley

  Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth by Arthur Hugh Clough

  The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

  Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

  Humility by Robert Herrick

  Caged Bird by Maya Angelou

  Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

  BEDTIME

  Hush Little Baby by Anon

  The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson

  The Star by Jane Taylor

  Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Eugene Field

  The Race to Get to Sleep by Brian Patten

  A Child’s Evening Prayer by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  The Land of Counterpane by Robert Louis Stevenson

  The Crescent Moon by Amy Lowell

  Escape at Bedtime by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Sweet and Low by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Night Mail by W.H. Auden

  POEMS FOR POSSIBILITIES

  POETIC TERMS

  INDEXES

  Introduction

  ‘Child! Do not throw this book about; refrain from the unholy pleasure of cutting all the pictures out.’

  Hilaire Belloc

  An anthology means a gathering of flowers. Unlike the ones you pick from the garden, these won’t wither, and will hopefully remain with you.

  Poetry was originally oral; it was sung or chanted, passed from person to person, across borders and down the centuries. These days, nursery rhymes and playground chants are still an integral part of a small child’s life, but thereafter poetry can all too easily be shunted into the realm of schoolwork or wheeled out like elderly literary relatives at a wedding or a funeral.

  Sometimes the poem at a funeral or a wedding manages to ‘move the people’ (as the great Spanish playwright Lope de Vega said was the job of art). Both of us discovered as children the tingling feeling a poem can bestow. A war poem can have more power than a history book. A love poem has consoled better than a friend. If you want to try a poem as a sticking plaster to help you through a wobbly patch, have a look at our list of poems for possibilities you may be facing, on page 266. The poems in this book are all poems we loved as children, poems we love reading to our children, poems we think you may want to know too.

  We launched Britain’s first children’s poetry app, hoping, in some small way, to introduce poems to a generation of children who were at home with technology and hoped that they would be encouraged to love, learn and even write poems. We made our iF Poems app, and gave them poems to read or hear being read by well-known actors. We hoped they would have fun with poetry in a way they might not have done before.

  The response to the iF Poems app was overwhelming. We received emails from all over the world suggesting new poems we might consider. Every day brought a new and often delicious addition to our own library of poetry. We began to gain an increasingly accurate sense of what our fellow poetry enthusiasts believe to be the greatest verses in the English language. Some poems transcend all barriers. These are the poems that everyone loves, the ones that consistently touch the soul. The result has been this book.

  In each chapter, we’ve tried to start with the easier poems, and then move on to some more difficult ones. You may need a dictionary on occasion: some of the language is difficult, but we hope you will enjoy the detective work. We have poets ancient and modern, fusty and frisky, famous and forgotten. We hope we have included a poem for every possibility, almost: as G. K. Chesterton observed, ‘Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.’

  Peruse, enjoy. It’s your book. But don’t cut all the pictures out . . .

  Allie Esiri and Rachel Kelly

  London, March 2012

  I Want to Know

  JOHN DRINKWATER

  1882–1937

  This amusing poem describes how confusing life can be when you’re growing up. Each quatrain, a verse of four lines, is composed of two rhyming couplets, two lines that rhyme. Each verse deals with a different subject and the rhyme is used for comic effect.

  I want to know why when I’m late

  For school, they get into a state,

  But if invited out to tea

  I mustn’t ever early be.

  Why, if I’m eating nice and slow,

  It’s ‘Slow-coach, hurry up, you know!’

  But if I’m eating nice and quick,

  It’s ‘Gobble-gobble, you’ll be sick!’

  Why, when I’m walking in the street

  My clothes must always be complete,

  While at the seaside I can call

  It right with nothing on at all.

  Why I must always go to bed

  When other people don’t instead,

  And why I have to say good night

  Always before I’m ready, quite.

  Why seeds grow up instead of down,

  Why six pence isn’t half a crown,

  Why kittens are so quickly cats,

  And why the angels have no hats.

  It seems, however hard they try,

  That nobody can tell me why,

  So I know really, I suppose,

  As much as anybody knows.

  There Was a Little Girl

  H.W. LONGFELLOW

  1807–82

  There was a little girl,

  Who had a little curl,

  Right in the middle of her forehead.

  When she was good,

  She was very good indeed,

  But when she was bad she was horrid.

  Where Did You Come From, Baby Dear?

  GEORGE MACDONALD

  1824–1905

  George MacDonald is considered to be one of the first writers who aimed to entertain rather than instruct children, and was a great influence on many other poets. As a clergyman, George MacDonald strongly believed in the power and beauty of God’s work. This is reflected in this poem, which is in rhyming couplets.

  Where did you come from, baby dear?

  Out of the everywhere into here.

  Where did you get your eyes so blue?

  Out of the sky as I came through.

  What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?

  Some of the starry spikes left in.

  Where did you get that little tear?

/>   I found it waiting when I got here.

  What makes your forehead so smooth and high?

  A soft hand stroked it as I went by.

  What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?

  I saw something better than anyone knows.

  Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss?

  Three angels gave me at once a kiss.

  Where did you get this pearly ear?

  God spoke, and it came out to hear.

  Where did you get those arms and hands?

  Love made itself into hooks and bands.

  Feet, whence did you come, you darling things?

  From the same box as the cherubs’ wings.

  How did they all just come to be you?

  God thought about me, and so I grew.

  But how did you come to us, you dear?

  God thought about you, and so I am here.

  The Leader

  ROGER MCGOUGH

  1937–

  I wanna be the leader

  I wanna be the leader

  Can I be the leader?

  Can I? I can?

  Promise? Promise?

  Yippee, I’m the leader

  I’m the leader

  OK what shall we do?

  My Shadow

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  1850–94

  I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

  And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

  He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

  And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

  The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow –

  Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

  For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,

  And he sometimes goes so little that there’s none of him at all.

  He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,

  And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

  He stays so close behind me, he’s a coward you can see;

  I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!