From My Commonplace: Poetry by Sara Teasdale

A smattering of the poems I have been enjoying with my Year 3 student recently:

 

Vignettes Overseas: Stresa

The moon grows out of the hills

A yellow flower,

The lake is a dreamy bride

Who waits her hour.

 

Beauty has filled my heart,

It can hold no more,

It is full, as the lake is full,

From shore to shore.

 

 

Stars

Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still,

 

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head,

White and topaz

And a misty red;

 

Myriads with beating

Hearts of fire

That aeons

Cannot vex or tire;

 

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill,

I watch them marching

Stately and still,

 

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness

Of so much majesty.

 

 

The Coin

Into my heart's treasury

I slipped a coin

That time cannot take

Nor a thief purloin, --

Oh better than minting of a gold-crowned king

Is the safe-kept memory

Of a lovely thing.

 

~Sara Teasdale

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Job with a commentary: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross (Ash)

Theological or Christian Living:  Openness Unhindered (Butterfield)

AO Book Discussion Group: Ivanhoe (Scott)

On Education: Mind to Mind (Mason and Glass)

Shakespeare: Hamlet (aiming to read a scene-a-day alongside my daughter's Shakespeare class at our co-op.  Don't we all need a little more Shakespeare in our lives?!)

Novel/Biography/Memoir:  The Rosemary Tree (Goudge)

Read-Alouds with the Children:  The Little White Horse (Goudge), Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan), Charlotte's Web (White)

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From My Commonplace: On Poetry

 "Poetry does not speak to us in the same way as prose.  Poems 'are always a personal 'take' on something, communication not just from head to head but from heart to heart' (JI Packer).  A poet can often touch us, move us, and unsettle us in ways that prose cannot.  Job is a blend of the affective (touching our feelings) and the cognitive (addressing our minds).  And poetry is particularly suited to this balanced address to the whole person.  But poetry  does not lend itself to summing up in tidy propositions, bullet points, neat systems, and well-swept answers.  Poetry grapples with our emotions, our wills, and our sensitivities.  We cannot just sum up a poem in a bald statement; we need to let a poem get to work on us – we must immerse ourselves in it."
 

~Christopher Ash, Job: The Wisdom of the Cross

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Job with a commentary: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross (Ash)

Theological or Christian Living:  The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Ferguson)
AO Book Discussion Group: Beowulf

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), A Philosophy of Education (Mason)

Topic of Special Interest: Galileo's Daughter (Sobel)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia de Luce Novel (Bradley)

Read-Alouds with the Children:  The Last Battle (Lewis), Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan)

 

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Wednesday Commonplace: A Bit of Poetry

I was not a poetry enthusiast growing up.  At all.  (Other than Shel Silverstein.)  The poetry notebook my seventh grade English teacher assigned sealed that deal.  But being the dutiful CM mother that I am, I started reading my children a poem a day as part of our school time.  The result: they love poetry, and it's growing on me too.   Here are a couple of our recent favorites, chosen from our studies in Ambleside Online Year 2 (Michelle) and Year 4 (Me).  Enjoy!

 

The Bees’ Song

by Walter de la Mare

(Kids’ Choice J)

 

Thousandz of thornz there be

On the Rozez where gozez

The Zebra of Zee:

Sleek, striped, and hairy,

The steed of the Fairy

Princess of Zee.

 

Heavy with blossomz be

The Rozez that growzez

In the thickets of Zee.

 

Where grazez the Zebra,

Marked Abracadeebra,

Of the Princess of Zee.

 

And he nozez that poziez

Of the Rozez that grozez

So luvez’m and free,

With an eye, dark and wary,

In search of a Fairy,

Whose Rozez he knowzez

Were not honeyed for he,

But to breathe a sweet incense

To solace the Princess

Of far-away Zee.

 

Evening

by Emily Dickinson

(Mom’s Choice)

 

The cricket sang,

And set the sun,

And workmen finished, one by one,

Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,

The twilight stood as strangers do

With hat in hand, polite and new

To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor came,

A wisdom without face or name,

A peace, as hemispheres at home,

And so the night became.