The Project Gutenberg EBook of Songs of Childhood, by Walter de la Mare

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Title: Songs of Childhood

Author: Walter de la Mare

Commentator: Anthony Hecht

Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23545]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Songs of Childhood

by Walter Ramal
[Walter de la Mare]

_with a preface for the Garland edition by_

Anthony Hecht

_Garland Publishing, Inc., New York & London_

1976

Bibliographical note:

This facsimile has been made from a copy in the Beinecke Library of
Yale University. (Iq.D373.902)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data De La Mare,
Walter John, 1873-1956. Songs of childhood.

(Classics of children's literature, 1621-1932)

Reprint of the 1902 ed. published by Longmans, Green, London, New York.

"Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), bibliography of his books for
children": p.

SUMMARY: A collection of forty-seven poems about subjects and
experiences familiar to children.

[1. English poetry] I. Title. II. Series.
[PR6007.E3S6 1976] 821'.9'12 75-32200
ISBN 0-8240-2310-2

_Printed in the United States of America_

_Preface_

The Romantic poets rediscovered a pastoral and Biblical dream: that a
child was the most innocent and the wisest of us all. Wordsworth
hailed him as "Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!" And in the next generation
Victorian novelists took that dream seriously enough to make children
the heroes and heroines of their most searching fictions. There had
been no "children's literature" to speak of before, except for the
oral and "popular" tradition, including lullabies and _Mother Goose_,
some of which go back as far as Tudor and even medieval times.

Children's literature today is an immense and complex domain; and
leaving aside for the present the works composed by children
themselves, what remains varies tremendously in skill and delight, as
well as in subtlety and intention. So I shall also set aside those
minimal "vocabulary-building" tales and verses whose s