The Buckley School's founder believed all public speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud. Above, a photograph of Lucy Maud Montgomery.
"One with her joyous outlook on life, vivid imagination, instinct for words and facility in expression, could not help being a poet."
– Canadian author E.J. Hathaway on Lucy Maud Montgomery
Many know her as the author of Anne of Green Gables. Lucy Maud Montgomery was a prolific writer who published close to 500 poems, as well.
If you're an Anne fan, this may not surprise you—given her famous character's need to expand the scope of imagination, fascination with the tragical, and penchant for fanciful names and flowery proclamations.
Montgomery based Anne of Green Gables on the places and people she knew as a girl living in Prince Edward Island. Many of her poems are also inspired by the island.
You can go to those places now, preserved as a Canadian historic site, which Buckley coach Jenny Maxwell visited last month.
Jenny visiting Green Gables
There you learn Montgomery was determined to be a writer from an early age. As an adult, she worked as a teacher and used her spare time to write. She also helped her family run the local post office from their kitchen. Montgomery took advantage of that, quietly sending out hundreds of submissions, achieving publication of short stories and poems—and also enduring a fair amount of rejection.
Lucy Maud Montgomery exhibit at Green Gables Museum
Like Anne, Montgomery was enamored with the beauty of nature. Pages from her journal show notes she made about the woods, water, flowers and trees you can still see at the Green Gables property.
"Poetry was my first love and I have always regretted being false to it. But one must live."
– Lucy Maud Montgomery
Below, a poem by Montgomery for you to read aloud—one that will wake up your diction and enunciation.
Morning along Shore
by LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY
Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!
All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast!
Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine!
Sweet, its cradle-lilt partaking,
Dreams that hover o'er the sea,
But the lyric of its waking
Is a sweeter thing to me!
Who would drowze in dull devotion
To his ease when dark is done,
And upon its breast the ocean
Like a jewel wears the sun?
"Up, forsake a lazy pillow!"
Calls the sea from cleft and cave,
Ho, for antic wind and billow
When the morn is on the wave!
