On her broad disk.
To live on pleasure’s painted wing,
To feed on all the sweets of spring,
Must be a mighty pleasant thing,
If it would last.Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) has suffered from the declining popularity of poems such
as Casabianca with its once-famous opening: The boy stood on the burning deck,
although plenty of lesser nationalistic verse has survived. In fact, Felicia Hemans was
one of the most prolific, popular and highly regarded poets of her day. Hymns for
Childhood (1833) was her best known book for children. She had five boys herself whom
she brought up on her own, after her husband had left her. Charlotte Smith also
supported her twelve children by writing, when her husband brought them to near ruin:
she wrote her most famous book of poetry, Elegaic Sonnets (1784) in debtor’s prison.
These are just two examples of women who were successful writers against the odds,
and whose work deserves to be better known today.
Sara Coleridge (1802–1852) devoted much of her life to the work of her famous father,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but she did write books for children, one a collection of poetry,
Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children (1834), including the delightful ‘Months of the
year’: January brings the snow/Makes our feet and fingers glow. Her title exemplifies
the continuing current of didacticism in books for children at that time: even a
Romantic poet’s daughter still speaks of ‘lessons ...for good children’, although they will
be ‘pretty lessons’!
The Taylors’ influence is also evident in the work of a later poet, Christina Rossetti
(1842–1897). Sing-Song (1872), is the best of a sub-genre of poetry where affection
between mothers and babies could be tenderly expressed:
Mother’s arms under you,
Her eyes above you
Sing it high, sing it low
Love me,—I love you.Walter De la Mare wrote admiringly of Rossetti’s ‘imaginative truth’, though he rather
spoiled his praise by going on to say that ‘Christian Rossetti was that still rarer thing, a
woman of genius’ (de la Mare 1930: x). Goblin Market (1862), a most original, sensuous,
long narrative poem, was not composed for the young, although it has been frequently
anthologised, illustrated and marketed for them. Rossetti’s biographer describes it as a
‘combination of the grotesque, the fairy tale, the erotic and the moral’, Jones 1991:91.
Did children actually like the poem or was it considered suitable for them because it was
full of goblins? Christina’s friend, Jean Ingelow (1830–1897) also wrote regularly
anthologised poetry.
Kate Greenaway (1846–1901) is known for her charming illustrations, but she wrote
her own poetry for Under the Window (1879) and Marigold Garden (1885). Edith Nesbit
(1858–1924) is a much better writer and famous for her fiction, but her poetry for
194 POETRY FOR CHILDREN