In the old homes in the forests,
thousands of years ago, children crowded about the open fire and
trembled when a great blast shook the house, for fear that the gigantic
beast who made the sound would call them and they would be compelled to
follow him. We think of wind as air in motion; they thought of it as the
breath and sound of some living creature. When we say that the wind
"whistled in the keyhole," or "kissed the flowers," or "drove the
clouds" before it, we are using poetically the language our forefathers
used literally.
We speak of "the siren voice of pleasure," "the blow of fate," "the
smile of fortune," and do not remember, often do not know, that we are
recalling that remote past when people believed that there were Sirens
on the coast of Crete whose voices were so sweet that sailors could not
resist them and were drawn on to the rocks and drowned; that fate was a
terrible, relentless, passionless person with supreme power over gods
and men; that fortune was a being who smiled or frowned as men smile or
frown, but whose smile meant prosperity and her frown disaster.
There are few poems which have interested children more than Robert
Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin." The story runs that long ago, in the
year 1284, the old German town of Hamelin was so overrun with rats that
there was no peace for the people living in it.
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