THE SINGING LESSON JEAN INGELOW We have now helped you to understand many poems. But sometime you must learn to read and understand and interpret poems for yourself. So we are going to let you try to find out for yourself what this poem means. Now let your teacher and your classmates see how well you have learned to read for yourself by showing that you, without any help whatever, can find out what the "moral" of this story is. Jean Ingelow, in the last line, says that you can find it for yourself. First read the poem over just to see the pictures, and to understand about the nightingale and the dove. Then go over it again, trying to find out the "moral" or the lesson that concerns you. Learn the meanings of the following words before trying to read the poem: contemptible fowl: a bird to be straightway: at once, without despised. delay. proud little crest: proud little divinely calm: calm as an eve A false note is really fun 5 The nightingale shyly took 6 The nightingale did not care; And there she fixed her eyes. She knew but little about; QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Why was it strange or to be wondered at that a nightingale "made a mis take in her singing? Why did she feel so badly about it? 2. What did the dove say to her? Why was a dove chosen to comfort her? Why not some other bird? Can you think of a jay's doing such a thing? 3. What did the nightingale do after the dove encouraged her? 4. What is a "psalm"? Why is the nightingale's song: called a psalm? 5. What is the moral of this story? That is, what has it to do with you? 6. Tell whether a person can do 7. his best if he is thinking at the same time about being praised for what he does. Then what do the first four lines of the last stanza mean in regard to human beings? The fifth and sixth lines? When you are doing something really well, do you do as the nightingale did, "care and know but little about " those who are standing near watching you, or do you long for praise? Think this over. Jean Ingelow, the author of "The Singing Lesson," was an English poet, born at Boston, England, in 1820. She died at London, England, in 1897. The sunrise wakes the lark to sing, CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI Sweetest the strain when in the song The singer is lost. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS THE BEST THAT I CAN AUTHOR UNKNOWN It is a strange thing that everything except a human being does "the best that it can." The rain that makes the flowers and the crops for our food; the frost, without which the soil could never have been made; even the little leaf which decays after it falls, and thus makes the soil rich, each does "the best that it can." Only human beings fail to do "the best that they can." Plants grow "the best that they can." Have you ever seen a brave little tree growing on a rocky hillside where there is scarcely any soil to hide its roots? It does the very "best that it can to grow. It sets a brave example to all of us. Of course the unknown author of this poem means to ask you, Are you doing the best that you can? Have you done the best that you could to-day? "I cannot do much," said a little star, |