Ebook Poems for Children

The greatest task which confronts the little child is the mastering of the mother tongue in its three phases speech, reading, and writing. In the accomplishment of this task, nothing is so helpful as the hearing and reading of large quan tities of suitable poetry. This fact was well known to the people of antiquity. Before the age of writing, the laws and traditions of each tribe were handed down through the medium of verse. Verse was chosen rather than prose, because its form facilitated memorizing and furnished a guarantee of accuracy. When the law or tradition had been once' thrown into the poetic form it was difficult to change its meaning without destroying its form and this would at once furnish a test of correctness. It was in this manner that all the nations of antiquity trained the minds of their young and transmitted to posterity the memory of the deeds done by their heroes, and those laws and rules of conduct which experience had found it necessary to impart to the youthful members of the community. Thus it was that the Greeks preserved to posterity the poems of Homer and the laws of their legislators.