The Lost Doll

In an email exchange with a friend about an image in the poem I posted a few days ago (and I still feel weird about calling something a 'poem' that I don't consider complete, but there's no word for poem-to-be), I recalled a beloved poem from my childhood. A quick internet search offered up the title, author, and in fact the whole poem itself. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the illustration I remember so clearly. The poem is "The Lost Doll" by Charles Kingsley (bits of his biography on Wikipedia are amusing/appalling; check it out if you have a spare minute, but read the poem first).

The poem is kind of maudlin and sappy and not really anything special compared to much of the rest of the large quantity of poetry my parents read to me as a child, but for some reason I really liked it. I think the picture was important. It was sort of the reverse of the typical before-and-after shots: initially the doll is perfect, with a flouncy dress and a perky little matching blue bow in her perfect blond curls. In the larger "after" picture, she is dirty and bedraggled; not only is her hair ribbon missing, her arms are missing, her dress is muddied and ripped, etc. The message is that the doll is just as lovely to the little girl who lost and then found her in her ragged state as she was before. Maybe it provided a good counterpoint to all the beautiful princesses in the fairytales. Maybe I just related to the raggedy doll because I was a bit of a dirty outdoorsy girl myself. Maybe, at some level, I understood it as a message about the redemptive power of love.

Anyone else remember this poem from their own childhood? Any other favorite poems from childhood?