Love-Songs of Childhood was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1894 and represents the fullest expression of Field’s gifts as a poet of childhood. The collection gathers lullabies, bedtime poems, verses about babies and small children, and elegiac pieces about children who have died — the emotional range running from the lightest humor to the deepest tenderness without ever falling into the mawkishness that threatens this kind of material.
The title’s “love-songs” is precise: these are not poems for children (though children love them) but poems about the love that adults feel for children — the protective tenderness, the delight in small things, the terror of loss. Field, who lost several children to illness, wrote from direct experience of both the joy and the grief of parenthood, and the best poems in the collection achieve their power through compression and restraint rather than effusion.
“Seein’ Things” (about a child frightened by shadows), “The Duel” (the dish ran away with the spoon), and “Jest ‘Fore Christmas” have all entered the permanent repertoire of American popular verse. Field’s technical range is wider than his reputation suggests — the collection includes poems in formal meter and rhyme, dialect poems, free-verse experiments, and prose poems — and the consistency of quality across more than fifty poems is remarkable.
Collecting Love-Songs of Childhood
First edition (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1894): Cloth binding with decorative cover.
Market values:
- First edition: $40–$100
- Illustrated editions (various): $15–$50