Notes
1] Longfellow's second son Ernest says of this poem: "It was while walking up and down with his second daughter, then a baby in his arms, that my father composed and sang to her the well-known lines .... Many people think this a Mother-Goose rhyme, but this is the true version and history" (15-16).
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow, Random Memories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922): 15. ND 237 L67A3 Robarts Library.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 2000.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/6
Rhyme: aabcdb