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My favorite poem: Steve Rayburn's selection
Sometimes the reasons for cherishing a poem owe more to childhood experiences than anything else
By Steve Rayburn
English teacher
Posted Friday, April 7, 2006, The OG, features
[Note: In honor of National Poetry Month, The Online Gargoyle asked each of Uni's English teachers to pick a favorite poem. We were curious: What does this poem mean to you? Why does it move you? How does it move you? What's the history of your relationship with the poem? Suzanne Linder started us off Wednesday with her selection. Today, Steve Rayburn, who teaches junior and subfreshman English, discusses his choice. Contact us here or here to tell us about your own favorite poem.]
This is an easy one for me. I love a great many poems, but when asked my favorite, I always go with Eugene Field's “Little Boy Blue.”
Field wrote children's poems, so this one has no great “literary” merit. My attachment to it is solely sentimental. This was the first poem I ever learned “by heart,” and I learned it from a favorite great-aunt, who was an English teacher.
I often stayed at her house for a week in the summer — a city boy out in the country. I would fish, roam the fields and woods, and read books my aunt handed me. As she prepared lunch one day, she taught me this poem, one line at a time. I was around 10. (She didn't have indoor plumbing until
around then, so I never stayed overnight until she got a toilet in the house!)
I can still recite it by heart, and I still choke up at the end, just as I have done for years — partly because of the content of the poem, yes, but more because of the content of my memories of a beloved aunt who instilled in me a passion for poetry.
Perhaps I should add that my favorite poem has nothing to do with sheep in meadows or cows in corn, but rather a young boy who puts his toys away then dies in his sleep. (HIGHLY sentimental!) My 10th-grade English teacher maintained he didn't die but simply grew up — the only mistake I think she
ever made!
“Little Boy Blue”
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now, don't you go till I come,” he said,
“And don't you make any noise!”
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue —
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place —
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder, as waiting the long years through
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
Since he kissed them and put them there.
Poem: “Little Boy Blue,” by Eugene Field (1850-1895)
Comments
Little Boy Blue
I, too, awakened in the middle of the night with this beautiful, old poem running through my mind. I memorized it as a child--40-plus years ago, and it has always been precious to me, because of its tender subject, of course, but also because it makes me think of my mother, who was the first to read it to me. And now, tonight, it comes back to me with even greater tenderness because my own "Little Boy Blue, " my precious son, passed away two months ago today, and in these gentle words, penned a century ago, my mother, my son and I come together tonight.
Little Boy Blue
It was my grandmother who told me that poem 30 years ago. She came from Cork Ireland and settled in Nottingham, England. She told told the poem with so much beauty, that the way I thought at the time, my toys loved me, and they loved me so much too. Now I'm older, I think little boy blue is in heaven with my beloved granny. Making sure he puts them away at night. Then playing with them all day long. I miss them both so much......
Little Boy Blue
One of the very first poems I learned outside of nursery rhymes,. My grandfather, a writer taught it to me as a very young girl and perhaps this poem was what caused me to love writing and literature. Puff the Magic Dragon had a similar message as did Frost's Stopping By The Woods One Snowy Evening. In the case of O'Neil, he did, in fact, write this about the son he lost at a young age and he never quite recovered; who does when one buries his child? A visit to the Eugene O'Neil Home in St. Louis is a great take. Beautiful poem, beautigful message some 48 years later, I remember sitting on my grandfather's lap as he read it to me.
I never knew Little Boy Blue
I never knew Little Boy Blue as a poem. It was sung to me by my father all through my childhood. He died last May and to keep his memory and tradition I sing it to my son. I have the music pages in front of me and Ethelbert Nevin is the composer. My sisters and I have fond memories of this song.
Little Boy Blue
Every year or so I pull out a little paperback from my bookshelf titled "One Hundred and One Famous Poems". "Little Boy Blue" is one of those poems, and it's always the first one I re-read.
I just did a little searching on Eugene Field's biography. Apparently he and his wife had eight children altogether. Two died in infancy, and another died while just a small boy. He must have shed many tears while writing this poem, and everyone who's read it probably has as well.
Little Boy Blue
I love this poem as my Grandmother and Mother both used to recite it to me it evokes very happy childhood memories, even though as quite a young child I realised the poignancy of the poem. I too have recited it to my son but I had never heard the last verse until I read it on your website - many thanks. It always seemed to me a rather odd poem to tell to a child, but I think children are very well able to understand the poem and cope with it's sadness. It always gave me comfort as a child to think of Little Boy Blue going to play with the angels. In fact, I always felt sorry for the toys.
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