Presidential poetry for Presidents’ Day: education in my youth
I’m not that old, but pedagogical practices in my youth seem absolutely archaic compared to whatever passes for education these days. For starters, we had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday, and they were on their actual real birthdays: Lincoln on February 12, and Washington on February 22.
Two days off! But they didn’t necessarily fall on Mondays; they fell whenever they fell, and sometimes – alas – they fell on a Saturday or a Sunday.
We also had to memorize terrible patriotic poetry back then, and lots of it. When I say “terrible” I’m not referring to its patriotism, I mean that it just wasn’t very good poetry. I suppose kids weren’t supposed to care about that aspect of it. Also, in those days I was very quick at memorizing poetry and so those early poems have tended to stick. Therefore I have a relatively large load of memorized doggerel to draw on.
One of those poems was about George Washington. To give you an idea of the flavor of what I’m talking about, it started this way: “Only a baby, fair and small…” and then filled the reader in on all the stages of Washington’s life, verse by verse. I had never looked it up online and was skeptical that it could be found, but voila! Here it is; isn’t the internet great?
And I now present it to you as an example of what the New York City schoolchild used to have to memorize and recite. I seem to recall this was in fifth grade:
Only a baby, fair and small,
Like many another baby son,
Whose smiles and tears came swift at call,
Who ate and slept and grew – that’s all,
The infant Washington.
I’ll let you go to the site and see it for yourself. The next verse is for the schoolboy Washington, then we have the lad Washington, then finally man/patriot and a lot of generalities with the only specifics being “surveyor, general, president.” Why so much emphasis on Washington’s boyhood I don’t know; maybe to go with the cherry tree story. But still, at least we were taught to think highly of Washington.
And Lincoln had a poem for memorization, too. It was a better effort than the Washington one, I think, although still not very good and rather creepy at that. I see now that the poem was by Rosemary Benet, apparently the wife of Stephen Vincent Benet.
I have no idea why the poem they had us memorize about Lincoln was not about his accomplishments at all, but rather about the mother who died when he was nine years old. In the poem, she comes back as a ghost and inquires about him. But here it is:
If Nancy Hanks
Came back as a ghost,
Seeking news
Of what she loved most,
She’d ask first
“Where’s my son?
What’s happened to Abe?
What’s he done?”“Poor little Abe,
Left all alone.
Except for Tom,
Who’s a rolling stone;
He was only nine,
The year I died.
I remember still
How hard he cried.”“Scraping along
In a little shack,
With hardly a shirt
To cover his back,
And a prairie wind
To blow him down,
Or pinching times
If he went to town.”“You wouldn’t know
About my son?
Did he grow tall?
Did he have fun?
Did he learn to read?
Did he get to town?
Do you know his name?
Did he get on?”
The urge that rose in me was to shout, “Yes, YES, don’t you know?” into the void.
Instead of that one, we might have been asked to memorize this poem – or at least the very last part of it, which I’ve always liked:
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Or what about this old chestnut by Walt Whitman? Schmaltzy, but it still gives me a little shiver when I read it:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Oh yes, “Oh Captain, My Captain”. You brought back memories. Or how about “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowing Evening”. The Nancy Hanks one too.
Now, they and Shakespeare are White Privilege and must be stamped out. We are too far gone when even the French are condemning what is happening here.
The Lincoln’s Mother Poem reminds me of this:
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/churchill-fiction-dream-short-story/
Text here:
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Miscellaneous/Other/Churchill/Dream/p01.html
Readers of this here blog would do well to follow John Derbyshire if they don’t already. His weekly podcast is worth subscribing to.
Being of a vulgar bent, ‘slept’ is not the word I’d use in the GW Poem.
“Why so much emphasis on Washington’s boyhood I don’t know; maybe to go with the cherry tree story.” neo
Yes, I think so. Washington was/is an exemplar. Honest to a fault, he could not tell a lie. He acted as an exemplar of the character needed for a child to grow up straight, tall and true. The lesson for children is self-evident; character and deceit are mutually exclusive.
Both Lincoln and Moses brought their people out of bondage and to the promised land but could not enter it.
On June 16, 1858 Lincoln proclaimed, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
Lincoln fulfilled his mission, to ensure that our nation would “become all one thing”, one in keeping with the Declaration’s most famous premise. He could not see its fulfillment because it is up to a people to fulfill that premise. Something America was on the precipice of achieving before leftist academia thrust its ‘intellectual’ dagger of deceit into America’s mind, in turn corrupting its heart and soul.
I remember Whitman, but not those others. Lucky me. I was required to memorize the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s second inaugural address, at the memorial in Washington, affects me deeply.
Washington and Lincoln built and preserved this nation. Leftists now want to tribalize it and shatter it.
Back when I was talking to poets on a regular basis, I would run into the view that poetry ought to be open, a pure exploration with no particular destination, a spontaneous encounter with the world and one’s soul, no rhyme, no meter, just discovery … or some such blather.
There are wonderful modern poems which have been written like that. However, I would remind my friends — gaining no popularity in doing so — that the history of poetry is mostly different. There is nothing necessarily wrong with old-fashioned poems written with a clear, even cold-blooded, intention to woo a lover, to commemorate a holiday, to gain favor with the emperor or to promote patriotism.
Then I would lay Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain” on them. Whitman obviously knew he was writing an elegy for Lincoln based on a simple sea battle metaphor. It’s still a great poem.
Also, in those days I was very quick at memorizing poetry and so those early poems have tended to stick. Therefore I have a relatively large load of memorized doggerel to draw on.
Now, when young I shared those abilities. But they had a downside – in the 50s were some of the most Godawful singing commercials the human race has been forced to bear, and my memorized doggerel includes every note of the Godawful music they were set to.
The problem with this sort of poetry is that you kind of have to know something of the subject. The Whitman thing might mean something to one who knows a bit about sea battles, if the Lincoln metaphor is absent. It might be referring to Trafalgar. Or off Samar.
Even the Washington poem puts flesh on a known story and means little without the known story. “Oh, yeah. The kid grew up well. So?”
So we can presume the kids knew something of this. But it emphasizes the lesson; Washington was a great man and you, too, can be great if it becomes necessary, if you follow the lessons in verse. And it may become necessary, children….
Robert Nathan’s poem “Dunkirk” requires you know that, if you get a cheer from the crew of the Golden Hind, you’re somebody. Even a couple of kids.
I see these poems as putting a gloss, a point, a lesson on a story the reader is likely to know already.
Which brings us to today….
@Insufficiently Sensitive:
I strongly suggest that you do not listen to the Bic Camera Song.
Do not click on this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duJWpgI2Ve0
Re: “O Captain, My Captain!”
Richard Aubrey:
The first time I read that poem I was in the fourth grade. It was in an older, hardbound book from the school library. The type was large and it had woodblock prints. It was a collection of stories and poems for kids.
I didn’t know the poem had anything to do with Lincoln, but it told a vivid emotional story in sort-of rhymes and I was enchanted. As I’m telling you, I remember it still. When I discovered the Lincoln connection years later I was even more impressed.
I find with great art I don’t have to get the whole thing and every little reference for appreciation right off. I can check in where I am and still benefit.
Zaphod-
At least they’re considerate enough to use Japanese lyrics for the Bic Camera Song, so we’re spared gritting our teeth at the message. And it’s merely dumb, not perverted like some of the 50s examples were.
Insufficiently Sensitive,
On more than one occasion I have lamented that I can’t simply delete the several terabytes of gray matter in my cranium devoted to retaining hundreds of TV theme songs and commercial jingles. If I could get that space back I might be able to do something useful with my life!
huxley
I agree, except these are used in educational settings. And that is a different issue.
I suppose one might ask what a kid is supposed to know in order to understand “The Devil and Dan’l Webster” which was in a couple Am Lit anthologies I’ve seen back in the day. It was for grownups, but the anthologists thought it would be useful in education and didn’t think the teacher had to explain Walter Butler’s place on the jury.
It’s like “The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay” which has a point but it presumes the readers understand the character and quality of the various woods in their proper uses. Maybe a hundred years ago….
I think we’re all missing the key and decisive point of celebrating Washington’s Birthday.
Richard Aubrey comes close with this lesson. “Washington was a great man and you, too, can be great if it becomes necessary, if you follow the lessons in verse. And it may become necessary, children…”
In an Age of Monarchy, ruled by Kings with inherited authority, and supported by an Aristocracy of inherited responsibilities, while the French Revolution raged, Washington gave a new nation an alternative model for leadership to follow.
Leaders take turns manning the helm of the ship of state. They prove themselves capable of assuming this role elsewhere, as Washington did as in the Virginia House of Burgesses and then as General in the Revolutionary War.
Although long prepared for the moment, “Washington dreaded assuming the presidency, and his two terms were filled with acrimony and punctuated by civil strife…. Almost everything he did in office set a precedent. ‘walk on untrodden ground,’ Washington wrote. ‘There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.’ “
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/George_Washington_1732-1799
It was that largeness of historical precedent that shaped his long lasting legacy.
And Washington’s greatest act was the peaceful transition from holding the highest office in the land, and then surrendering that Office to his opponent.
What the past four years and six months proves to me is that America has so far declined that we are incapable of doing that.
We are no longer worthy of our Founding Fathers precedent.
And worse. The young have no awareness, much less any appreciation of that. And how long and bloody was the struggle to achieve that needed, limited seasonal acrimony, punctuated by the peaceful transition of power, in the USA for over 230 years (save 1861 – 1865), because of George Washington.
The most recent poll on the subject (October?) found that 46% of Democrats and 45% Republicans (and Independents likewise, similarly) expect civil war soon.
Good luck with that.
This Be The Verse:
They f**k you up, your Mom and Dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were f***ked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats
That were half the time soppy-stern
And half at each other’s throats
Man hands on misery to man;
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself.
—Philip Larkin, poet laureate of England
The giraffe is disappearing from the world
Without a sound.
Who are we to say it runs
Like a rocking-horse galloping in a dream?
Think of a girl with six fingers on one hand.
You must let that strange hand
Touch you.
—a poem I read long ago; don’t remember who wrote it, and it’s probably not really accurate, but I always liked it.
Lincoln may not have been first, but he did a great bit of damage to the constitution and the law of the land. His halo is a bit dull and crooked.
Here’s a poem combining a giraffe with George Washington. It’s not exactly patriotic, more of a surrealist anxiety dream. It’s from a collection called “The George Washington Poems” (1967) by Diane Wakoski. Still alive. I’m glad.
____________________________________________
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Wearing a green silk dress
I drove to California with a giraffe who looked like George
Washington.
The roads were long
and covered with ivory boxes.
We stopped at a filling station for gas and found that the next
hundred miles of road would be dangerous.
I left notes for you in every ivory box we passed.
The gold clasps did not open
properly.
I wrote letters to you
and fastened them with gold clasps.
But my green dress wore out long before I reached California.
The giraffe abandoned me at the first zoo.
I kept calling INFORMATION and asking for George Washington,
but his phone service had been shut off
in Washington. New York. LA. and
Palm Beach.
“We can connect you with the new president,” said the operator.
“It won’t do any good,” I answered.
“I must reach George Washington. No one else will do.”
So I left more notes for you in the ivory boxes.
I kept saying, “Let me know where you are.”
I travelled all the roads in the country.
I left notes everywhere.
I sent you letters with gold catches unclasped.
I telephoned every place I could think of.
My giraffe left me after finding a zoo.
My green silk dress wore out,
I have no clothes.
Please tell me
what I am doing–riding over the same dangerous 100 miles
everyday,
leaving letters in ivory boxes.
They all bear your name.
Please tell me what I’m doing?
Why?
Sometimes I do remember reading in the paper over 200 years ago
that you died–I must know
you’re dead
by now.
Please tell me what I’m doing,
George Washington.
Please tell me what I’m doing,
–for my own good.
–Diane Wakoski
A few years after the Kindle ebook first came out, I spent a little time looking for free ebook downloads from various places online. I got a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and de Tocqueville’s two vols. Then I saw a biography of Ben Franklin written perhaps in the first half of the 19th century. I downloaded it.
The writing was so bad I couldn’t make it past the long preface and the first page of Chap. 1. The author was some self-important Judge who would write in these long streams of puffery and flattery about himself and Franklin. He was like some extreme character taken from Shakespeare or Dickens. Maybe it was just the preface, so I looked at Chap. 1. Nope, still the same.
I learned the Nancy Hanks poem in middle school because it was easy to memorize and we had to “get up” a poem every week. I can do “Jabberwocky” quite fluently to this day, but have lost a lot of “The Highwayman,” so I listen to the vocal version by Loreena McKennitt instead, but it was a very musical poem when declaimed properly.
My impression (age 12-ish) was that Abe’s mother’s point-of-view was presented as a counter-point to the “great man” view of the world: no matter what he had accomplished, good or bad, he was an individual who was loved for himself, not his effect on events, and her concern was about him alone. When she left his life, it was not at all clear what would happen to him later, and very unlikely (to her) that he would become famous for anything at all, or even just “get by” in his hometown.
Of course, the poet knew, and we knew, but the plaintiveness of her plea was the pretense that she didn’t know.
AesopFan. Agree wrt Nancy Hanks. And she’s a mother. That other stuff–not particularly important to a mother.
Historians Edith Hamilton and Geoffrey Ashe, separately, say you never take myths literally, but always take them seriously.
The Romans told each other the story of Horatius at the bridge for a thousand years. That’s more important than whether it was a bridge or a ferry, or more than three guys.
Once MacCauley put it into heroic verse, generations of school kids memorized much of it.
It, like the Birkenhead Drill, is a lesson in how one should behave. Like the Alamo, or the Bulge. People are depending on you.
As Kipling’s character, referring to the Birkenhead catastrophe, said of the Royal Marines:
“We’re most of us liars, we’re ‘arf of us thieves, an’ the rest of us are rank as can be,
But once in a while, we can finish in style, (which I ‘ope it won’t ‘happen to me).”
Clearly, though, if it happens to him, he hopes he’ll be up to it.
Washington was probably the next guy, after Cincinnatus, to potentially be the local version of dictator for life, and just…go home. Two thousand years it took for another example.
So, patriotic poetry, good or bad, tries to teach a lesson, especially when written for children and/or taught in school.