Journal of Genetic Psychology (Volume 19) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912. Excerpt: ... VERSE MAKING IN OUR SCHOOLS By Edward Harlan Webster, The Commercial High School, Springfield, Massachusetts. I suppose every one that has read Macaulay's Essay on Milton, was, upon his first reading, struck with the following lines: "Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence, the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half civilized people is poetical... In a rude state of society, men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is, therefore, in such a state of society, that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection." If Macaulay is correct in his analogy, and I believe that he is, there is no time that is better fitted for the first lessons in verse construction than the early years of a child's school life. At the age of ten, he illustrates to a high degree of excellence certain qualities of the poetical temperament. Like primitive man, he is vividly imaginative, spontaneous in expression, essentially emotional, and rhythmic in the revelations of many of his emotions. Through his imagination, unhampered in these early days by a strong sense of reality, he is enabled to discover in nature about him all manner of poetic similitudes. Natural objects form for him, as for his early forefathers, not a mere background, but living things capable of human emotions. And he does not regard the objects of nature simply as alive, apart, to be admired, and wondered at: he thinks of them as fellow creatures: --"There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander --many a time, At evening, when the earliest stars began To move ...