Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Children's Hour (poem)

"The Children's Hour" is an 1860 poem first published by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the September 1860 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The poem describes the poet's idyllic family life with his own three daughters, Alice, Edith, and Anne Allegra: "grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair."

A photographic print of Thomas Buchanan Read's portrait of the three Longfellow daughters was widely distributed along with the poem.

The poem has, like Longfellow's other works, been called overly-sentimental, but it has remained one of the most frequently cited favorite American poems.

Full poem

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Monday, January 12, 2009

The One Minute Writer

From The One Minute Writer blog:

Who's got the time to journal daily? You do.

How it works

1. Read the daily writing prompt.

2. Push "Play" on the timer on the right side of the screen.

3. Spend 60 seconds or less writing a response to the daily prompt.

Today's Writing Prompt: If you could live for a year at a different time in history, what time would you choose?

My response: As a child, I always wanted to live like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wore a bonnet and loved reading by candlelight. I know that there were extreme hardships of being a pioneer family but I feel like today we (I) spend so much time wrapped up in events, issues, arguments, jobs and other crap that are meaningless in the grand scheme of things perhaps getting back to the bare basics would help put everything into proper perspective.