McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson CXII · Part 11: Country, sea and the great classics

118. The Great Voices (C. T. Brooks)

Goal: Your child reads a short, musical poem aloud and explains what the sea, mountains and woods "say."

⏱ About 20 minutes · 5 steps

Open it at the Internet Archive ↗

You'll need

  • The book, open to this lesson
  • A notebook or lined paper and a pencil

What's in the book

A four-stanza poem by Charles T. Brooks: the sea calls to the mountains, the torrents and the pine forests answer, and the last stanza asks the human heart to sing like them. (The page also has notes for "A Pen Picture.")

The lesson, step by step

  1. About the author

    The book says Charles T. Brooks (b. 1813, d. 1883) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard in 1832, was a minister in Newport, Rhode Island, and translated much German poetry, beginning with Schiller's "William Tell." (Your child met that story in Lessons LXVII and LXVIII.)

  2. Read aloud

    Read the poem aloud, letting the voices answer each other. It begins:

    A voice from the sea to the mountains,

    From the mountains again to the sea;

    A call from the deep to the fountains,

    "O spirit! be glad and be free."

  3. Talk about it

    SayWho is speaking in each stanza: the sea, the torrents, the pines? What do they each say?

    SayIn the last stanza, who is told to sing? How should it sing?

    SayFind words that rhyme at the ends of the lines. How do the rhymes make the poem sound like an echo?

  4. Memorize

    Learn the last stanza by heart:

    Oh! sing, human heart, like the fountains,

    With joy reverential and free,

    Contented and calm as the mountains,

    And deep as the woods and the sea.

  5. Optional writing

    Your child writes two lines about what the wind, the rain or a river might "say."

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