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Literatur: Anthologie
[III] Dr. Watts's preface to the Divine Songs, written more than a hundred years ago, expresses very truly some of the reasons for imbuing the young mind with poetic thought and diction.
"The ancients," says he, "among the Jews and heathens, taught their children and disciples the precepts of morality and worship in verse;" – and we are directed in the New Testament, to teach and admonish one another by hymns and songs."
"There is great delight," he proceeds, "in the very learning of truths and duties in this way." – "What is learned in verse is longer retained in memory, and sooner recollected." Poetry of a character suited to the moral sense he affirms to be, "constant furniture for the minds of children, that they may have something to think of when alone. – Thus they will not be forced to seek relief for emptiness of mind, out of the loose and dangerous sonnets of the age." The corrupt literature of the last century is certainly equalled in this [IV] and preventive cares are as important now as ever to prepare the young mind for the relish of good things.
"Every great poet is a teacher," and a teacher from the beginning of life. "I wish to be considered as a teacher or as nothing," says Mr. Wordsworth. It is no trifling good to the young, who are to become mature, and to profit in after life by the seed sown in the morning, to provide them with means of innocent and intellectual entertainment. "It is no trifling good," says an eminent poet, * "to win the ear of children with verses which foster in them sentiments of humanity and tenderness and piety, and exercise pleasurably and wholesomely, their imaginative and meditative powers, affording them stores of thought fruitful to the last of life, and redeeming the mind from low tastes, and bad habits of utterance."
In no way is a graceful and refined style of speech so naturally formed as by poetic language made thoroughly familiar to the young. "I do not like poetry; – I cannot understand it," often say half-taught children. Give them the poetry of good writers, with a little necessary comment, and you will remove all obscurity from the most instructive and effective poetry, and all distaste to it. I have endeavored to do this in the following collection, and I trust that while it exhibits only "things pure," "lovely, and of good report," it may also give much pleasure, and be serviceable accordingly.
New-York, May, 1852.
[Fußnote, S. IV]
Dr. Southey.
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Eliza Robbins: Class-Book of Poetry,
for Use of Schools or Private instruction.
New-York: Appleton and Company 1852, S. III-IV.
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PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89042935916
URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=MCoWAQAAMAAJ
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Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer