poems was once highly valued; now the oral performance of poetry might be a rap
accompanied by a reggae backing or a tongue-twister, as well as ‘The daffodils’. Another
recent development is the recognition of children as poets; contemporary poetry is very
accessible to children and they are encouraged by teachers, poets and annual
competitions to try their hands at writing it themselves. Publication of this poetry
demonstrates the high standards that can be achieved.
Poetry for children, then, is defined by the age: contemporary poetry emphasises the
need to love, value, amuse and protect small people, and has a liberal tolerance of their
private brand of humour; the poetry of the Puritan age believed its function was to save
the souls of children by admonishing them to virtue, Godliness and obedience. As John
Bunyan wrote in 1686:
I do’t to show them how each Fingle-fangle,
On which they doating are, their Souls entangle.‘Ancient and Wiser Tongues’: Poetry for Children to 1900Before the eighteenth century most published poetry relating to the young is about
children or good for children, rather than to entertain or feed the imaginations of
children, although there are some glorious lullabies written, perhaps surprisingly, by
men. Thomas Dekker’s (1570?-1632) A cradle song is tender and loving: Golden
slumbers kiss your eyes/Smiles awake you when you rise; so is George Wither’s (1588–
1667) A Rocking Hymn: Sweet baby, then, forbear to weep/Be still my babe; sweet baby,
sleep. These were the exceptions in an age when literature for children, where it existed
at all, tended to be harsh, didactic, religious and moralistic. Popular culture in the form
of chapbooks provided the children and their parents with a more robust diet of rhymes,
jokes, ballads, heroic tales and extracts from contemporary writing.
One of the earliest examples of poetry for children is John Bunyan’s (1628— 1688)
variously titled Country Rhimes for Children: or A Book for Boys and Girls: or Divine
Emblems (1686). Zachary Leader sums up Bunyan and other writers for the young in
this period: ‘At the heart of the Puritan attitude towards childhood lies a rock-hard
belief in original sin’ (Leader 1981:6). Writing in the preface to Divine Emblems Bunyan
showed, however, that he was aware that children needed to like the taste of the
medicine, if they were to imbibe it:
Wherefore good Reader, that I save them may,
I now with them, the very Dottrill play.
And since at Gravity they make a Tush
My very Beard I cast behind the Bush.
And like a Fool start fing’ring of their Toys,
And all to show them they are Girls and Boys.Even so, it is stern stuff. Around the same period, Abraham Cheare (d. 1668) addressed
the recipients of his poetry affectionately enough: ‘Sweet John’, ‘My pretty Child’, but A
Looking Glass for Children (1672), reads harshly today: Hath God such comliness
TYPES AND GENRES 189