Verses for Children, and Songs for Music

Juliana Horatia Ewing possessed that rare gift among Victorian writers: she never talked down to children. This collection, drawn from pages of the beloved Aunt Judy's Magazine, proves her mastery of the small, perfect poem. Here birds are buried with grave ceremony by children learning grief, and imaginative play becomes sacred ritual. The verse moves from the sorrow of "The Burial of the Linnet" (where young mourners discover community in loss) to the mischievous adventures of Fritz and Grethel, whose house-building games blur the line between reality and invention. These are not poems that merely instruct; they sit with a child in the garden, in the attic, in the long afternoon, and listen to what the world sounds like from four feet high. The rhythm begs to be read aloud, not silently, and many poems seem written for singing. For readers who remember the particular loneliness and wonder of childhood, or for those seeking poems to share with small ears, this volume offers something increasingly rare: verse that respects its audience's emotional capacity while never abandoning its joy.