The Paintbox Cobalt and umber and ultramarine Ivory black and emerald green What shall I paint to give pleasure to you Paint for me somebody utterly new I have painted you tigers in crimson and white The colours were good and you painted a-right I have painted the cook and a camel in blue And a panther in purple You painted them true Now mix me a colour that nobody knows And paint me a country where nobody goes And put in it people a little like you Watching a unicorn drinking the dew E V Rieu
For Ffion and her dog more lap dog than lone dog J M I would like to thank the friends who helped to form and shape this book Tessa for the long nights poring over poetry books all those who suggested poems for inclusion my children and Robin for their support and I would like to dedicate Fern Hill to Colin Leyshon who liked nothing more than to roll the words of poets around and had an enviable memory for poetry and song
Introduction Here is the gorgeous Barefoot Book of Classic Poems compiled and beautifully illustrated by Jackie Morris The poems here are classic because although their authors are no longer living they continue to shine brightly in the English language true stars As E V Rieu’s opening poem may suggest these are poems that persist in managing to be new This is an anthology for adults to rediscover for children to newly delight in and for both to share together It provides a place both magical and familiar for our imaginations to live in Some of the poems here are among the most enduring children’s poetry we have They are almost part of our DNA The Owl and the Pussy-Cat The Jabberwocky The Tyger maggie and milly and molly and may The rich illustrations to these familiar classics sing on the page too Shakespeare whose language remains the true expression of our psyche is here along with Milton Donne Byron and Wordsworth Their poems read as vividly now as in the gone days when they were written Sylvia Plath Stevie Smith and Kathleen Raine are as powerfully present as Elizabeth Barrett Browning timelessly counting the ways in which she loves There are poems from the unique geniuses of Walt Whitman
and Dylan Thomas whose glorious Fern Hill is the soul of childhood from the war poets Isaac Rosenberg and Siegfried Sassoon and from those formal masters Byron and Auden Throughout the book there are real treasures to be found There are surprising juxtapositions and deep echoes As with all the best anthologies the individual poems call and respond to each other across the pages and the ages Reading Jackie Morris’s selection what struck me forcibly was the truly human quality of the contents From birth when as Sylvia Plath says love sets us going like a fat gold watch through childhood to our relationship with the natural world our journeys love war belief and death the poems open up real and imaginary ways of seeing remembering or wondering Poetry of all the arts offers us moments in language that preserve or celebrate explore or lament transform or enhance our human joys and sadnesses The best of poetry is memorable as prayers are and in this wonderful selection of classic poems both young and older readers will find something that will stay with them or has stayed with them all of their lives CAROL ANN DUFFY
