Our Holidays in Poetry compiled by Mildred P. Harrington and Josephine H. Thomas along with the poetry committee of the Carnegie Library School Association was originally published in 1929 and enjoyed its tenth printing in 1985! This free eBook download contains over 300 poems to help you celebrate eight different holidays.
In our library work with children it has been difficult to find holiday poems, including the more modern poems, which both have literary merit and are easily comprehensible to children.
The present volume, compiled from the series of holiday poetry booklets, is an attempt to meet this need.
As such you will find poems suitable for celebrating the following holidays:
- Lincoln’s birthday.
- Washington’s birthday.
- Easter.
- Arbor Day.
- Mother’s Day.
- Memorial Day.
- Thanksgiving.
- Christmas.
Many of the authors will be recognizable to readers:
- Walt Whitman.
- James Whitcomb Riley.
- William Cullen Bryant.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes.
- Lord Byron.
- Carl Sandburg.
- John Greenleaf Whittier.
- Emily Dickinson.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- Charles Kingsley.
- Thomas Moore.
- Christina G. Rossetti.
- Sir Walter Scott.
- Walter De La Mare.
- William Shakespeare.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
- William Cowper.
- Jean Ingelow.
- Henry Van Dyke.
- Julia Ward Howe.
- Bret Harte.
- Sara Teasdale.
- James Russell Lowell.
- William Blake.
- Susan Coolidge.
- Kenneth Grahame.
- G. K. Chesterton.
- Eugene Field.
- Tchaikovsky.
- Mary Mapes Dodge.
- And the ever-popular Anonymous.
You’ll also find passages from the Bible, Christmas hymns and carols, old folk songs, and even Poor Richard’s Almanack.
With Memorial Day coming up, this is a great time to download a nice compilation of suitable poems for celebrating the event. And it’s free!
Free eBook
Suggestions
There are many ways to use a compilation of poetry, especially one focused on the holidays. These are just a few ideas to get you thinking:
- Choose a poem from the appropriate section about a month in advance to memorize and recite.
- Copy a poem in your copybook.
- Draw or illustrate a scene from a poem.
- Write your own poem in the form of one you enjoy in the book.
- Use a favorite poem for dictation.
- Rewrite a poem as prose.
- Simply enjoy reading a poem a day during the holiday season.
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