While, therefore, Longfellow is repeatedly aware of the presence of children, it is not by the poems which spring out of that recognition that he especially reaches them. In his poem From my Arm-Chair, he refers to The Village Blacksmith; that has a single verse in which children figure, but the whole poem will arrest the attention of children far more than From my Arm-Chair, and it belongs to them more. It cannot be too often repeated that books and poems about children are not necessarily for children. The thoughts which the man has of the child often depend wholly upon the fact that he has passed beyond childhood, and looks back upon it; it is impossible for the child to stand by his side. Thus the poem Weariness contains the reflection of a man who anticipates the after life of children; there is nothing in it which belongs to the reflection of childhood itself. Tennyson’s May Queen, which has found its way into most of our anthologies for the young, is a notable example of a large class of verses quite unfit for such a place. It may be said in general that sentiment, when made a part of childhood, is very sure to be morbid and unnatural. We have a sentiment which rises at the sight of childhood, but children themselves have none of it; the more refined it is, the more unfit it is to go into their books. Here is a collection of poetry for children, having all the marks of a sound and reputable work. As I turn its leaves, I come upon a long ballad of The Dying Child, Longfellow’s The Reaper and the Flowers, a poem called The Little Girl’s Lament, in which a child asks, “Is heaven a long way off, mother?” and for two or three pages dwells upon a child’s pain at the loss of her father; Tennyson’s May Queen, who is so unconscionably long a time dying; Mrs. Hemans’s imitation of Mignon’s song in a poem called The Better Land; and a poem by Dora Greenwell which I must regard as the most admirable example of what a poem for a child should not be. It is entitled A Story by the Fire, and begins,— “Children love to hear of children! I will tell of a little child Who dwelt alone with his mother By the edge of a forest wild. One summer eve, from the forest, Late, late, down the grassy track The child came back with lingering step, And looks oft turning back. “‘Oh, mother!’ he said, ‘in the forest I have met with a little child; All day he played with me,—all day He talked with me and smiled. At last he left me alone, but then He gave me this rosebud red; And said he would come to me again When all its leaves were spread.’” Thereupon the child declares that it will put the rosebud in a glass, and wait eagerly for the friend to come. So the night goes and the morning comes, and the child sleeps.