A Budding Little Poet

My 8yr old dear daughter wrote this poem last week. The form isn't so great, but that will come in time. Her word choice impresses me as well as the ideas presented in the poem. I like it because it reveals she was inspired by her schoolbooks and our conversations about character and the marks of a hero or heroine. She is always writing little poems and leaving them around the house in tied up scrolls. I come behind and find them, chide her for not putting them in her poetry journal and then sneak and record them on my computer.

I've heard the battleship's horn

The galley slaves mourn

But this sound is the saddest of all

The soldier's cry

The tear upon his eye

Darkness dulls the light

I'm Edward, son of the sky

And here's what I say to you

When the darkness comes in

Like a flood

Don't be afraid

The bitter comes afore the sweet.

Can you tell from this poem that 1) we recently watched Ben Hur 2) she is studying the Civil War 3) that our family has many discussions about the battle between darkness and Light 4) recently she learned the riddle that Samson told in the Bible about the honeycomb 5) she listened to her older sister narrate from Churchill's Birth of Britain about King Edward?