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13 February 2013

 

My sister as a wee child was obliged to learn some Longfellow, and I believe that was what I remember seeing at her school recital in England - many children reciting at once. Later she taught it to me (at that point in Canada), though I only remember a bit as it was 55 years ago. There's just something about Longfellow. Perhaps my early initiation into his rhythms causes me to like his verse.

A tiny bit:

Hiawatha’s Childhood

By the shores of Gitchee Gumee,
By the shining big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
   There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
“Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!”
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
“Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!”

I used to wonder what people who didn't know any poetry did in waiting rooms, but now people have the anti-poetry or perhaps anti-cogitation assister, their phone.


posted by - 9:42 AM

Comments:
i too love longfellow and know quite a bit of his poetry by heart -- the funny thing is, i just posted something about a teeny book i wrote in at xmas, and i wrote it in a meter like Hiawatha... i love his long rhyming lines. my starts "now two thousand twelve is ending..."
A fun way to write.
 
'Twas the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintry seas ... one poem I mostly remember after lo these many years. I recited it in class in high school.

... She struck where white and fleecy waves
looked soft as carded wool
but the cruel rocks they gored her side
like the horns of an angry bull
 

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