Excerpt from Graded Poetry: Eighth Year Poetry is the chosen language of childhood and youth. The baby repeats words again and again for the mere joy of their sound the melody of nursery rhymes gives a delight Which is quite independent of the meaning of the words. Not until youth ap proaches. Maturity is there an equal pleasure in the rounded periods of elegant prose. It is in childhood therefore that the young mind should be stored with poems Whose rhythm Will be a present delight and whose beautiful thoughts Will not lose their charm in later years. The selections for the lowest grades are addressed primarily to the feeling for verbal beauty, the recog nition of Which in the mind of the child is funda mental to the plan of this work. The editors have felt that the inclusion of critical notes in these little books intended for elementary school children would be not only superfluous, but, in the degree in which critical comment drew the child's attention from the text, subversive of the desired result. N or are there any notes on methods. The best way to teach chil dren to love a poem is to read it inspiringly to them. The French say The ear is the pathway to the heart. A poem should be so read that it will sing itself in the hearts of the listening children. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.