Posted on 08/27/2006 9:21:02 AM PDT by Zechariah11
I have just spent two hours on line and combing through a Children's Poetry book for inspirational poems which could be used in the classroom. I have a list of ONE!!! Does anyone else have an idea for a poem other than "If" which can be used?
And PLEASE don't suggest those vapid, nonsense works from Shel Silverstein. Thanks to all who wish to make a contribution.
Suggest Bill Bennett, Book of Virtues
Moosebites build haracter.
Do you like heese? I love heese!
There once was a man from Nantucket...
Oh, wait...you said for the classroom...never mind.
So does installing a new muffler on a '67 Skylark.
Or installing a new muffler on a moose.
THE WORLDS NEED
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
O many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
What's the age range of the kids you're teaching?
Just don't carve your initials on a moose.
One tried and true favorite is Horatio at the Bridge usually excerpted from Macauley's longer poem Horatius :
http://www.englishverse.com/poems/horatius
If this is too militant, there are many other poems from the same era positively presenting human virtues, before western civilization descended into multicultural indifference. Some of these are to be found by browsing the works of Arnold, Ruskin, Macauley, Tennyson, Browning, Emerson. Not to be overlooked are poems of an earier generation such as Donne , George Herbert and others.
Little Things Count
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land.
Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the Heaven above.
-Ebenezer Cofham Brewer
The American Citizens Handbook 1968 p476
Golden Keys
A bunch of golden keys is mine
To make each day with gladness shine.
"God morning" is the golden key
That unlocks every day for me.
When at the table, "If you please"
I take off from my bunch of keys.
When friends give anything to me,
I use my little "Thank you" key.
"Excuse me"--"Beg your pardon" too
If by some mistake some harm I do.
When evening comes, "Goodnight" I say
And close the door of each glad day.
With a golden ring these keys I bind
This motto -- "Be ye kind."
I'll often use each golden key
And then a child polite I'll be.
Author unknown
American Citizens Handbook, 1968
p476
Kindness garden
Kind hearts are the garden,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the blossoms,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
Love is sweet sunshine
That warms into life,
For only in darkness
Grow darkness and strife
Author unknown
AC Handbook p 482
Other short poems - page 486
If wisdom's ways you'd wisely seek
Five things observe with care:
Of whom you speak,
To whom you speak,
And how and when and where.
Author unknown
-----
Little loving thoughts
Are tiny little seeds
From which bud and blossom
Little loving deeds.
-------
The Never-Old
They who can smile when others hate
Nor bind the heart with fruits of fate,
Their feet will go with laughter bold
The green roads of the Never-Old,
They who can let the spirit shine
And keep the heart a lighted shrine,
Their feet will glide with fire-of-gold
The bright roads of the Never-Old.
They who can put the self aside
And in Love's saddle leap and ride,
Their eyes will see the gates unfold
To glad roads of the Never-Old.
Edwin Markham
AC Handbook p495
Excerpts from The Master
[about Abraham Lincoln...supposedly written shortly after the Civil War; shows that true leaders are often mocked, until time proves they were right.]
A flying word from there and there
Had sown the name at which we sneered,
But soon the name was everywhere,
To be reviled and then revered:
A presence to be loved and feared,
We cannot hide it, or deny
That we, the gentlemen who jeered,
May be forgotten by and by.
He came when days were perilous
And hearts of men were sore beguiled:
And having made his note of us,
He pondered and was reconciled.
Was ever master yet so mild
As he, and so untamable?
We doubted, even when he smiled,
Not knowing what he knew so well.
He knew that undeceiving fate
Would shame us whom he served unsought;
He knew that he must wince and wait--
The jest of those for whom he fought;
He knew devoutly what he thought
Of us and of our ridicule;
He knew that we must all be taught
Like little children in a school.
We gave a glamour to the task
That he encountered and saw through,
But little of us did he ask,
And little did we ever do.
And what appears if we review
The season when we railed and chaffed?
It is the face of one who knew
That we were learning while we laughed.
[end of excerpt]
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
From F.T. Palgrave's --The Golden Treasury of the best songs and lyrical poems --Centennial Edition c. 1961, p. 459
I made an error in this poem, up above.
The word "hatre" should appear in the last line.
Kindness garden
Kind hearts are the garden,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the blossoms,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
Love is sweet sunshine
That warms into life,
For only in darkness
Grow hatred and strife
Don't know if this is what you're looking for.
Robert Louis Stevenson
http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=overview&author=55
No man survives when freedom fails,
the best men rot in filthy jails,
and those who cry appease, appease
are hanged by those they tried to please.'
Hiram Mann
Sixth grade. I would like them to learn a familiar quotation from Shakespeare and at least a four line stanza from a poem per week.
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