The Mother Tongue, Book I: Lessons in Speaking, Reading and Writing English · Secs. 457–458 · Part 2: Part Second
126. Daybreak
Goal: Your child learns Longfellow's "Daybreak" by heart and writes it from memory with all its quotation marks.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- Paper and pencil (a notebook kept just for this book works well)
What's in the book
Section 457 is Longfellow's poem "Daybreak": a wind comes up out of the sea and calls the ships, the forest, the bird, the rooster, the corn and the bell to wake, but tells the churchyard "Not yet!" Section 458 asks the child to learn it and write it from memory.
The lesson, step by step
Read the poem
Read "Daybreak" aloud.
A wind came up out of the sea
And said, "O mists, make room for me."
Follow the wind
Your child tells, stanza by stanza, where the wind went and what it said to each: the mists, the ships, the land, the forest, the bird, the rooster, the corn, the bell, the churchyard.
Talk about the ending
Ask: Why does the wind say "Not yet! in quiet lie" to the churchyard? (Those resting there are not to be wakened yet.) Talk about it as gently as your child needs.
Notice personification
The wind talks and acts like a person. Your child finds two more things in the poem that are spoken to as persons.
Learn and write (Section 458)
Learn the first three stanzas today. When the poem is learned, your child writes it from memory.
Check it gently
Compare with the book: capitals at the start of lines, quotation marks around each thing the wind says, capital O. Your child fixes their own slips.
What a good result looks like
Example (written for this guide, not from the book):
A copy written from memory with a capital at the start of every line, a new pair of quotation marks for each thing the wind says, and the capital O in "O mists" and "O bird".
Your child can add one more stanza of their own in the same pattern:
It rattled at the schoolhouse door,
And said, "Wake up, and sleep no more."