United States, (1831-1905)
The Pig and the Lark
- A PIG scrambled up from his slumbers,
- And grunted with rage at the lark:
- “Why must you begin your loud carol
- Before we are out of the dark?”
- “Good sir,” said the lark, as he flitted
- Right gayly from blossom to bud,
- “Look up to the sky for your morning —
- It never begins in the mud!”
About the Poet:
Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) was a U.S. children’s writer and editor. Dodge began her career writing, editing and working with her father, the scientist James Jay Mapes, to publish two magazines, the Working Farmer and the United States Journal. She then had great success with a collection of short stories, The Irvington Stories (1864), and a novel Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, which became an instant bestseller.
Later in life Dodge was an associate editor of Hearth and Home, edited by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Donald Grant Mitchell where she had charge of the Household and Children’s Departments of that paper for many years. In 1873 Dodge became the first editor of the a new children’s publication, St. Nicholas Magazine, where she was able to work with prominent nineteenth century authors and solicited stories from Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson and many others. [DES-07/12]