Poetry Treasure for Poetry Friday

      Tabatha Yeatts of The Opposite of Indifference is our wonderful host today on this final Poetry Friday of April. Today not only is Tabatha hosting, but sharing her marvelous poetry collection of imaginary places, from others and her own originals. Be sure to visit her double post today! 

         Considering all the poetry love that's happened and is still happening during April, I thought I'd share a treasure I received from my brother, who owns an antique store, and once in a while finds a book he keeps for me. The Children's Treasury, edited by May Hill is such a book. If you don't know May Hill, she later became May Hill Arbuthnot of the Arbuthnot Anthology and Children and Books, known for dedication all her life to children's literature. These two books above were my textbooks in my Children's lit class in college. 



         The Children's Treasury is just that, a treasure, filled with nursery rhymes, favorite poems from older times, animal stories and myths, short nature studies, and a few dramatizations. Each page is beautifully tinted or in black and white. In poetry, there are poems by Eugene Field, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kate Greenaway, Rose Fyleman, Amy Lowell, and a few anonymous treats. When a poet's name is unfamiliar, I've looked them up, and discovered new treasures. A poet I thought I'd share today is Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, a Norwegian writer and the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate the 1903 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in literature, and several sources named him as one of the four great Norwegian writers.  Because we've all been waiting for spring's wonder this year, Bjørnson's poem, The Tree is a beautiful little story to share. 

The Tree

Ready with leaves and with buds stood the tree.
"Shall I take them?" the frost said, now puffing with glee.
"Oh my, no, let them stand,
Till flowers are at hand!"
All trembling from tree-top to root came the plea.

Flowers unfolding the birds gladly sung.
"Shall I take them?" the wind said and merrily swung.
"Oh my, no, let them stand,
Till cherries are at hand!"
Protested the tree, while it quivering hung.

The cherries came forth 'neath the sun's glowing eye.
"Shall I take them?" a rosy young girl's eager cry.
"Oh my, yes, you can take,
I've kept them for your sake!"
Low bending its branches, the tree brought them nigh. 

Here is the book's cover and two other pages of illustrations:

May Hill writes: "For the children, we hope it will prove a solace on rainy days and an added joy on sunny ones. We hope it may grow to be one of those favorite books, so constantly in use that when other interests call, it remains the top book in the pile. Then it might deserve that delightful title that was once given to Mother Goose in the eighteenth century--"The Top Book of All."

        The book's copyright is 1923.