Favourite Enid Blyton Poems

[Courtenay]

That's a great one, Kate Mary - again, shows another side to Enid that we don't normally see in her writings for children. There's a real poignancy to it, along with the flash of bittersweet humour at the end.

[Rob Houghton]

Adventurers

(from The Teacher's Treasury vol 2)

When Christopher Columbus went sailing on the sea,
To find a way to India, I wish he'd taken me!
I'd have gone as cook or sailor-man, or just a cabin-boy,
And I'd have been the first to shout, "Oh, land ahoy, ahoy!"

And when Sir Walter Raleigh manned his sturdy wooden ships
With jolly Devon sailor-men, their cutlass at their hips,
I wish, I wish that I'd been there, for I'd have joined them too,
And gone a-voyaging across the ocean grey and blue.

And if they wouldn't have me, I'd have looked about to find
Some other ship to take me, for I'd not be left behind.
I'd have called it 'The Adventurer' and sailed off all alone,
And p'raps discovered countries of my very very own.

And then when I'd come back again with treasure in my hold,
And tales of countries far away with stores of hidden gold,
P'raps Walter Raleigh might have come and begged a boon of me,
And asked to be my sailor-man when next I went to sea!

[Kate Mary]

That's a super poem, Robert, as good as anything from A Child's Garden of Verses. I have never come across The Teachers' Treasury, I had a look at it in the Cave, volume 2 looks like a rich source of poems.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, it's a stirring poem with a catchy rhythm. In The Teacher's Treasury Volume 2 several of Enid Blyton's poems appear alongside poems by Edward Lear, Walter de la Mare, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jean Ingelow, Rose Fyleman and others. Enid's verses certainly don't look out of place! All the poems are beautifully illustrated by Horace Knowles.

Here's another one from the same volume:

The Whispering Trees

Whenever I go
Where the beech-trees grow,
I hear them whispering soft and low.

What do they say,
In that whispery way,
Do they tell secrets the whole of the day?

Often I try
When I'm wandering by
To hear what they say when they whisper and sigh.

But though I creep near
I never can hear,
For the language they talk is so windy and queer.

But I would like to know,
Why they all murmur so,
And what they are whispering - soft - and low.

[Rob Houghton]

I was reading that one last night and thinking how much it reminded me of one of the key ideas in The Enchanted Wood - listening to the trees and hearing what they say! :- . Obviously Enid kept this idea with her until she wrote of the trees whispering 'wisha-wisha-wisha!'.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It reminded me of the Enchanted Wood too.

Another poem about trees - a poem of deep and serene reflection - was printed in Journal 30, Summer 2006. It originally appeared in The Nature Lover, April 1935:

Trees

Entangled with our world
But in a world not ours
They live and dream and grow,
In time whose moving hours
Are all unmeasured;
To them the Now is all, and even so
Unheeded; their life so sweetly leisured
Is made of sun and rain, of wind and frost,
Of inward stirrings,
Pull of roots when branches sway, wind-tossed,
The grasp of little feet, the sudden whirrings
Of frightened wings;
All these and many other things
Unguessed, unguessable, to them belong;
Secret, far-withdrawn, their souls they keep,
And neither wind nor rain, nor blackbird's song
Can wake them wholly from their whispering sleep.

[Daisy]

Yes, that is another beautiuful poem - and what has struck me in reading this thread is the variety of styles used - but each still real poetry to me, who likes poems to rhyme!

[Courtenay]

Another poem about trees - a poem of deep and serene reflection - was printed in Journal 30, Summer 2006. It originally appeared in The Nature Lover, April 1935:

Trees

Entangled with our world
But in a world not ours
They live and dream and grow,
In time whose moving hours
Are all unmeasured;
To them the Now is all, and even so
Unheeded; their life so sweetly leisured
Is made of sun and rain, of wind and frost,
Of inward stirrings,
Pull of roots when branches sway, wind-tossed,
The grasp of little feet, the sudden whirrings
Of frightened wings;
All these and many other things
Unguessed, unguessable, to them belong;
Secret, far-withdrawn, their souls they keep,
And neither wind nor rain, nor blackbird's song
Can wake them wholly from their whispering sleep.

That one is incredibly beautiful, Anita. Definitely one that deserves to be better known and to stand alongside more famous poets. I have to admit I would never have guessed that poem was by Enid Blyton if you hadn't told us - it really does go to show that she didn't just write rhythmic little jingles for young children!

[Rob Houghton]

Agreed - that one is really beautiful. I love the rhyme-scheme and the subject, and the feeling of beauty Enid manages to imbue the poem with. Agree with Courtenay that this poem is worthy of being better known. I don't remember it being published in a Journal...I will have to check it out.

I agree with you too Daisy, that for me, poems have to rhyme. I hate 'blank verse' - the only exception being 'Thee Prelude' by Wordsworth, which sometimes does rhyme anyway.

[Kate Mary]

Trees is a gorgeous poem, we are unearthing some wonderful stuff from the darkest recesses of the Cave, and I'm also grateful to be able to read poems from books that I don't have in my collection.

I was very taken with this poem from the Morning Post 16th May 1925. I posted a link to it in another post but I think it's worth repeating here:

The Meeting

He came round the corner on velvet toes,
Just by the hedge where the blackthorn grows,
And I looked at him, and he looked at me,
And we both stood still by the blackthorn tree.

He stood on the path with his tail-asway
And his pointed ears were turned my way,
But his subtle face with its two sharp eyes,
Gave no sign of his quick surprise.

"And who shall pass by the blackthorn tree,
Will you or I" said the fox to me.
"The way is narrow and only one
Adown its winding course may run.

I gave him room and he trotted by,
And sent me thanks from his keen brown eye,
But I thanked him more than he ever knew
for letting us meet as comrades do.

[Rob Houghton]

I love that one! It has a great feeling of how it is to meet a fox, and I love the way the fact it is a fox is saved until near the end, making it mysterious and special.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Oh, that's lovely! I like the way Enid Blyton imagines the fox speaking in a slightly quaint manner. It's very special to experience a moment of communion with a wild creature, and Enid captures the hallowed thrill of it perfectly.

[walter raleigh]

Adventurers

(from The Teacher's Treasury vol 2)

When Christopher Columbus went sailing on the sea,
To find a way to India, I wish he'd taken me!
I'd have gone as cook or sailor-man, or just a cabin-boy,
And I'd have been the first to shout, "Oh, land ahoy, ahoy!"

And when Sir Walter Raleigh manned his sturdy wooden ships
With jolly Devon sailor-men, their cutlass at their hips,
I wish, I wish that I'd been there, for I'd have joined them too,
And gone a-voyaging across the ocean grey and blue.

And if they wouldn't have me, I'd have looked about to find
Some other ship to take me, for I'd not be left behind.
I'd have called it 'The Adventurer' and sailed off all alone,
And p'raps discovered countries of my very very own.

And then when I'd come back again with treasure in my hold,
And tales of countries far away with stores of hidden gold,
P'raps Walter Raleigh might have come and begged a boon of me,
And asked to be my sailor-man when next I went to sea!

I really like this one Robert! Can't think why....

[Rob Houghton]

LOL! I actually did think of you when typing it! Thought you'd like it!

[walter raleigh]

Seriously though I did very much enjoy it, along with a lot of the other poems here. Until I found this website I had no idea of Enid's gift for poetry. I'd probably read a few poems here and there in the Magazine Annuals and some of the Dean collections I had as a child, but had no idea she had written so much and of such variety and quality.

It just makes it even more infuriating that she is so blithely dismissed as a hack, who only churned out formulaic children's books. As a writer, she clearly is so much better than that.