10 - 1 = 8 !!!!!!

In the winter time we go

Walking in the fields of snow;

Where there is no grass at all;

Where the top of every wall,

Every fence and every tree,

Is as white as white can be.

Pointing out the way we came,

Every one of them the same.

All across the field there be

Prints in silver filigree;

And our mothers always know,

By the footprints in the snow,

Where it is the children go.

***

When I was 6 years old, one of our school lessons was poetry, combined with handwriting practice.

This was in my infant classroom, where the particular lady teacher was very strict.

Once a week, we would have to sit and copy a poem from the blackboard in our 'best' writing.

At that time in my life, my handwriting was quite messy and I always got the lines of the poems completely muddled so that they were all set out incorrectly.

I've still got that book of mine and occasionally get it out for a good laugh!

***

There were three poems which stick in my mind from those happy days in my infant classroom.

The first poem is 'Bed in Summer' by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

***
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.
***
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day.

***

I loved this poem as it was so apt at that time in my life, when I would sit on my triangular window ledge, which was just ideal for a little girl to sit there with her knees up at evening time and watch the 'goings ons' in our road.

***

The second rhyme was 'Ten Little Nigger Boys'..I doubt that this would even be allowed in a classroom nowadays...but my version in my book is completely hilarious as I have muddled up all the rhyming bits so that none of it rhymes at all!

(Just to give you a 'snippet' of what I wrote....

'

'Ten little Nigger Boys went out to dine,

One choked himself and then there were eight!')

(As you can imagine,my maths report also read...could do better!! LOL)

***

Finally, there is the poem above, 'White Fields' by James Stephens, which I've always remembered, off by heart.

***

I would just add that by the age of 11, there was a vast improvement in my handwriting as I remember winning a handwriting competition (in my best italic handwriting, with my Osmiroid fountain pen no less!!) at the local library. Secondly, my love of poetry has remained.

(But I have always hated maths! ;-)

***

I wonder if you have any favourite poems from your Primary school days?