April is National Poetry Month! To join in the celebration, we will be posting poems from the Historical Society’s collections.

Our first selection is from a young student from Litchfield’s Spring Hill School named Peter Seeger.

Yes, the same Peter Seeger who later became a renowned folk singer and activist was once a boy who composed delightful poems for his school’s literary magazine.

The Spring Hill School was founded in 1926 by Dorothy Bull and Mabel Spinney, who modeled the school on the ideals of progressive education.

Students feed chickens at the Spring Hill School

Before “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” there was “Cheer-Up Rhyme for a Misty Day,” published in Wit and Wisdom, Spring Hill’s Upper School literary publication, in June of 1932.

Cheer-Up Rhyme for a Misty Day

‘Tis a very foggy day,
In the misty, foggy way,
And I hope that it will clear up very soon;
For the hillside’s all blurred out,
By this dampish white about,
And all last week I hardly ever saw the moon.

It’s so wet and damp and “mucky,”
That one doesn’t feel so lucky,
If on slips and falls down in an “ooky” pond.
But, when I settle down and read,
Having cared for every need,
I feel that I should smile and say,
“Be darned”.