Today my mind is still on those seminal books of my childhood which I still own. I will never willingly part with them. Almost all of these cherished books deal with various forms of nature that I showed a fascination with quite early in life. Most of them do, but not all.There is one book in particular that isn't a nature guide book. It is a small, tattered, cloth-covered volume of poems. More than any other single tome, this old book bred in me a love of the English language and the miraculous ways that words can be put together to create beauty. It also fostered a belief in me of the power of old things to be beautiful, to touch the spirit, and to teach the soul.
I can still remember the day I ran across this well-worn little book. When I was a child, my grandparents began collecting antiques. They would go to estate sales, and it wasn't unusual for them to come home with box lots of items, go through the contents, keep what they wanted and discard the rest. My grandmother had just finished going through a large box of items, and I found this on the discard pile:
Perhaps it's because I want you to fall in love with this book as I did, but I sincerely hope that you'll click on the photos to view them full size so you can catch all the detail. When I saw this unwanted book, I was immediately drawn to it. The gold in the lettering and on the daisies softly glowed in the sunlight. Even at that age, I loved flowers, and I wanted to know what a "garden of verses" was. I opened it.
"Copyright Boston, 1898"...even as a child in the early 1960s, I felt that Boston and the year 1898 were far away and long ago-- both things that made the book even more special. And look! There were more daisies etched in gold! My grandmother looked over to see what I was doing. Obviously the look on my face told her something because she said, "If you like that book, you can have it." After a big smile and an even bigger "Thank you!", I was off with my newly-discovered treasure.
I sat down on the bench beneath the shade of a blossoming magnolia tree and looked at the goldfish swimming in the pools for a moment before opening the book again. Once I started to read, I was lost to everything around me. Robert Louis Stevenson's words flowed together in a way that I'd never seen before. I tried some of the lines aloud and smiled. I loved the way they sounded. And the things he talked about! When I was a child, I battled many an illness. What child who'd ever been sick could not read and identify with
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day
from The Land of Counterpane? Or this one that reminded me of my favorite playground activity?
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh! I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Mr. Stevenson even seemed to have dreams like I did, at least it looked that way when I devoured The Land of Nod:
That one little tattered book began my lifelong love of poetry and of language. As a child, I knew nothing of rhyme, meter or form. I just knew what sounded right, and which poems seemed charged with light and power and emotion. Poetry to me has always seemed prose stripped to its essence, full of imagery and feeling. Daisies From A Child's Garden of Verses was the beginning of all this for me. This book is what made me begin to learn to love the language.
Over the years, I've moved on from Robert Louis Stevenson's verses for children. Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Robert Frost are just three of the poets who make the hair on the back of my neck rise. But Robert Louis Stevenson will always own a very special place in my heart.
What about you? Are books more than stories to be told or characters to enjoy? Does the perfect combination of words on a page make your heart sing? What are the books that began your lifelong love affair with language?
