All day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains by the winter sea.
Almost the happiest of such moments were those lulled by the sleepy music of 'The Castle of Indolence,' a poem now perhaps seldom read, at least by the young. Yet they may do worse than visit the drowsy castle of him who wrote
So when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles Placed far amid the melancholy main.
Childhood is the age when a love of poetry may be born and strengthened--a taste which grows rarer and more rare in our age, when examinations spring up and choke the good seed. By way of lending no aid to what is called Education, very few notes have been added. The child does not want everything to be explained; in the unexplained is great pleasure. Nothing, perhaps, crushes the love of poetry more surely and swiftly than the use of poems as school-books. They are at once associated in the mind with lessons, with long, with endless hours in school, with puzzling questions and the agony of an imperfect memory, with grammar and etymology, and everything that is the enemy of joy. We may cause children to hate Shakespeare or Spenser as Byron hated Horace, by inflicting poets on them, not for their poetry, but for the valuable information in the notes. This danger, at least, it is not difficult to avoid in the _Blue Poetry Book_.
ANONYMOUS: A RED, RED ROSE 66 ANNAN WATER 178 CHERRY RIPE 176 HELEN OF KIRKCONNEL 115 LAWLANDS OF HOLLAND 106 LYKE-WAKE DIRGE 330 SIR HUGH; OR, THE JEW'S DAUGHTER 326 SIR PATRICK SPENS 259 THE TWA CORBIES 78 THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL 124 WILLIE DROWNED IN YARROW 163
BARNEFIELD, RICHARD, 1574-1627: THE NIGHTINGALE 206
BLAKE, WILLIAM, 1757-1828: NIGHT 5 NURSE'S SONG 1 THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER 16 THE LAMB 4
BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1809-1861: TO FLUSH, MY DOG 51
BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, 1794-1878: TO A WATERFOWL 179
BURNS, ROBERT, 1759-1796: BANNOCKBURN 67 I LOVE MY JEAN 62 O, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST 61 THE BANKS O' DOON 64 THE FAREWELL 68 THERE'LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME 63
BYRON, LORD, 1788-1824: COULD LOVE FOR EVER, RUN LIKE A RIVER 71 SO, WE'LL GO NO MORE A ROVING 181 STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA 111 THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB 82
CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1777-1844: HOHENLINDEN 36 LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER 13 THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC 43 THE LAST MAN 255 THE SOLDIER'S DREAM 27 YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND 22