THE LAND OF SONG
Book II.
FOR LOWER GRAMMAR GRADES
SELECTED BY
KATHARINE H. SHUTE
EDITED BY
LARKIN DUNTON, LL.D.
HEAD MASTER OF THE BOSTON NORMAL SCHOOL
SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY
New York BOSTON Chicago
1899
Copyright, 1899,
By Silver, Burdett & Company.
BOSTON:
C. J. PETERS & SON, TYPOGRAPHERS.
Plimpton Press
H. M. PLIMPTON & CO., PRINTERS & BINDERS,
NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.
COMPILERS' PREFACE.
The inestimable value of literature in supplying healthfulrecreation, in opening the mind to larger views of life, and increating ideals that shall mold the spiritual nature, is concedednow by every one who has intelligently considered the problemsof education. But the basis upon which literature shall beselected and arranged is still a matter of discussion.
Chronology, race-correspondence, correlation, and ethicaltraining should all be recognized incidentally; but the mainpurpose of the teacher of literature is to send children on intolife with a genuine love for good reading. To accomplish this,three things should be true of the reading offered: first, itshould be literature; second, it should be literature of somescope, not merely some small phase of literature, such as thefables or the poetry of one of the less eminent poets; and third,it should appeal to children's natural interests. Children's interests,varied as they seem, center in the marvelous and thepreternatural; in the natural world; and in human life, especiallychild life and the romantic and heroic aspects of maturelife. In the selections made for each grade, we have recognizedthese different interests.
To grade poetry perfectly for different ages is an impossibility;much of the greatest verse is for all ages—that is onereason why it is great. A child of five will lisp the numbers ofHoratius with delight; and Scott's Lullaby of an Infant Chief,with its romantic color and its exquisite human tenderness, isdear to childhood, to manhood, and to old age. But the Landof Song is a great undiscovered country to the little child; by[Pg 4]some road or other he must find his way into it; and these volumessimply attempt to point out a path through which he maybe led into its happy fields.
Our earnest thanks are due to the following publishers forpermission to use copyrighted poems: to Houghton, Mifflin &Co. for poems by Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes,Lowell, Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, James T. Fields, Phœbe Cary,Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, and Sarah Orne Jewett; to D.Appleton & Co. for a large number of Bryant's poems; toCharles Scribner's Sons for two poems by Stevenson, fromUnderwoods, and A Child's Garden of Verse; to J. B. Lippincott& Co. for two poems by Thomas Buchanan Read; and toHenry T. Coates & Co. for a poem by Charles Fenno Hoffman.
The present volume is intended for the fourth, fifth,