First of all, I finished a full year of history today. It took us a year and a half but we finished it. This is a first in the 13 years that I have been homeschooling. I finally began using Sonlight’s History curriculum. I had avoided Sonlight for years because I didn’t feel like it was the perfect curriculum. But I have finally come to realize that there is no such thing as the perfect curriculum. I have found that I need to find a curriculum that is good enough and most importantly one that I can use. I have purchased so many history curriculums in the past that I just didn’t use. They were too complicated, too time consuming, or just offered so many options that I found myself unsure which to pick. I love Sonlight because it is all laid out and pre-planned. I just pick up the books and read the day’s lesson.
Secondly, we had school outside on the front porch. It’s an absolutely gorgeous day….the perfect temperature. Not too hot and not too cold. At one point we stopped reading to listen to two birds calling to each other. I’ve never heard birds do that before. It was nice to stop and listen and enjoy God’s creation. Ahh! The beauty of homeschooling!
Thirdly, we had lots of good discussions over this last history lesson. Discussion and the contemplation of ideas. That is what I want our homeschool to be about. And this is even more important than finishing a curriculum.
And then the cream…we took some time to read poetry. I want poetry reading to be a more consistent part of our school day. I came upon a poem titled "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Longfellow. "The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a saying we use often in our home for things that are...well, wrecked but I never knew that it was a poem so I was intrigued. I read it to the girls. Brooke was soon sitting next to me. She was becoming more and more engrossed in the poem. I felt her moving closer and closer as the tension in the poem built..she was very into it. At the end of the poem we did laugh. I don’t think that is the intended reaction…but we did enjoy the story. And I loved seeing the joy in my kids, of listening to a well written poem and being excited to find out what happened next.
Here’s the poem:
"WRECK OF THE HESPERUS"
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintery sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The Skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
for I fear a hurricane.
"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church bells ring,
Oh, say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog-bell on a rock bound coast!" --
And he steered for the open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of guns;
Oh, say, what may it be?"
Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"
"O father! I see a gleaming light.
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
