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History of Poetry for Children : Between the years 1715 and 1804 no genuine poems for infant minds were written. In 1715 Isaac Watts had written Divide and Moral Songs in Easy Language which is a book of short poems intended for children. But in the following years there was no prolific writing for children. After Watts there were Ann and Jane Taylor, but they were chiefly the creators of the moral tale in verse. However, there are three writers who stand out as separate figures in the period 1715-1808. They made verses about children and for children. The three are John Merchant, Nathaniel Cotton and William Blake.
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| William Blake |
John Merchant : The earliest of these three poets is John Merchant. In 1751 and 1753 he published his two very unusual volumes of verse for children. These volumes are Puerilia (1751) and Lusus Juveniles (1753). Puerilia was further divided into (subtitled into) 'Songs for Little Misses' Songs for Little Masters and Songs on Divine. Moral and Other Subjects.' Though this volume of verse was well-printed and adorned with folding copperplate frontispiece, it was, as evidenced from its subtitles themselves, a mixture of Watts and Newbury. Merchant's verse deals with the pleasures of dancing. good food, drinking and so on. In it he seems to have no sense of limitation with regard to the suitability and adaptability of the subjects for the verse for children. In one poem 'Decoy Ducks' he describes the foolish sports of children such as kite-flying, and playing with toys. Merchant has a quick eye for country sights and vivid little peep shows. But whar he actualy falls short of is the power or faculty of imagination. As his poems were a collection of spasmodic outbursts conveyed in indisciplined pattern they were soon lost in the sands of time and never got reprinted.
Nathaniel Cotton : Another poet is Nathaniel Cotton (1705-1788). Cotton's renowned work in Visions in Verse for the entertainment and instruction of younger minds' (1751). But this work was 'bland and equable' and 'The Visions' instruct 'younger' minds excellently within their professed range: thus:
See, the lark (preens) his active wings.Rises to heaven, and soars, and sings.His morning hymns, his mid-day toys.Are one continued Song of prais..Shall birds instructive lessons teach.And we be deaf to what they preach?
J. Harvey Darton observes : "There was nothing in such fancies to excite any particular emotion, good or evil. It is creditable to the author and his epoch that they were highly esteemed at the time. It would have been strange if they were not. That is their historical value today."
William Blake : The third author is William Blake, unknown to the younger minds of the period but 'solitary and unique' with regard to his unprecedented genius. But later, Blake's poems surpassed all the barriers of negligence and lack of consideration and secured a prominent place in the world of verses for children. During the period of composing the Songs of Innocence Blake was. spiritually, a happy child 'on a cloud' singing: such songs as few but he could write. Blake's Songs of Innocence is a record of the innocent experience, an expression of human nature which is observed and conceived by a child, and at its root lies the ecstacy of shadowless and pure joy. Among the other minor poets of the period such as Edgeworth. Taylor and Trimmer, Blake was not accepted, nor was he acknowledge a children's poet. This was because, as Blake himself writes in one of his poems.
Nor is it possible for Thought.A greater than itself to know.
Blake was a poet of imagination, knocking at the gates of heaven or playing among the shining stars and he found it possible, with his visionary gleems and simple vocabulary, to communicate with the younger minds on earth. On the other hand, the Edgeworths, the Wattses and the Taylors, found to be capable only of laughing a little and allaying the gravity to a little extent, were never exclusively free from their egoistic world.
The Unknown Blake : In his period Blake was quite away from the limelight of poetic renown, people took him as an eccentric, "Communing with God in a back garden" in a world where he had to earn his living. Even Mrs. Trimmer was known better and more widely than Charles Lamb or William Blake.
Blake read the translation of Salzmann's (German) Elements of Morality, in this book, Salzmann had dwelt, in a very modern way, on the question of teaching children purity. He said that we should speak to children of the organs of generation as freely as we speak of the other parts of the body, and explain to them the noble use which they were designed for, and how they may be injured. There is no doubt in the fact that Blake did what Salzmann could hardly hope to do with safety. Blake's poems are woven with the theme of purity and human psychical nature. But he did the almost mechanical task of engraving another man's drawings in order to earn a living - to be able to do his own designs for the Songs.
As Blake's thoughts were unpalatable and unsavoury to the young and tender there arose a dispute about including Blake's verses in collections for nursery children. J. Harvey Darton says: "...it was doubtful whether the verse form itself ought to be on the shelves. Isaac Watts and Mrs Barbauld were far from sure of its value to the young intelligence. There eyes were holden by the period's strong sense of hard clear pattern, a pattern not of colour but of well-proportioned shapes fitting one another. By poetry they meant metre and scansion, which were the antithesis of prose; and poetry, by involving these artifices, was unnatural and difficult to children. They were underrating their own public, really. They spoke as grown-up patrons, aloof though affectionate, kindly but alien." But time has vindicated Blake, while his contemporary writers of children's verse II forgotten.
University Questions also can be Answered:
Q. Blake's position as a children's poet is as significant as his mystical insight, discuss the importance of his work in comparison with the work of some of his contemporaries who wrote verse for children.
Or
Q.Give a brief sketch of the state of contemporary poems for children in the period of Blake and examine Blake's place with reference to it.