Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:
The first poems I read and loved were in Volume Nine of a set of books called The Children’s Hour given to me by my mother when I was about five. I can summon up the opening lines of all of them – Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” itself, naturally, “The Barefoot Boy” by John Greenleaf Whittier, Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” and “The Things I Miss,” attributed by me to Emily Bronte for most of my life but actually the work of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, most widely known now as an encourager and correspondent of Emily Dickinson.
Today and over the weekend, we’ll feature a few of these poems in tribute to my mother and to all parents who instill in their children a sustaining love of poetry because they love it themselves.
We begin with “The Barefoot Boy” by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1982):
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,–
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,–the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,–
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
(Photo by Zev, aka Fiddle Oak)
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