Poem of the Day: ‘Over the Way’

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905), served for many years as the editor of the popular St. Nicholas Magazine for children. The author of short-story collections for both children and adults, Dodge is remembered chiefly for her children’s novel, “Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates,” the fruit of a longstanding fascination with the Netherlands. She also published collections of poetry. “Over the Way,” with its tetrameter octets, rhymed aabbcddc, represents that rarest of species: a love poem to the speaker’s prospective mother-in-law.