A child-friendly equivalent to Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

To fall asleep at night, my 4 year old asks me to read him Samuel Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Marnier. He falls asleep while I'm reading it.

The meter and rhyme are slightly hypnotic and soporific, and he loves the theme of ghosts and ships. However I feel the content of death and Catholicism are too dark for him to ruminate on. So I'd like to find an alternative if possible.

Can you recommend something with a similar sing-song type of rhyme and rhythm, not scary or sad, that's very long so he can fall asleep to it, and not childish either?

Howdy, Pardoner! Sounds like quite a kid you've got there. I would encourage his continued receptiveness to literature as soon as you think he can handle it without anxiety. Some of the images in the Rime are a little scary (Life-in-Death and so on) but perhaps you could identify and gloss over those verses until he can read them for himself. The poem certainly does have a gorgeous, hypnotic quality--"we were the first that ever burst into that silent sea." I hope he continues to love it. It's a cute story (about your son, I mean).

But to answer your question, if you want long and singsong, try Longfellow's The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Longfellow won't have the same ethereal quality, but at least your son will be spared the supernatural terrors. And Longfellow was prolific so you could always vary your repertoire. Other LitNetters may have more soothing suggestions. But Longfellow always put me right to sleep. :)

Finally, just for the record, Coleridge wasn't Catholic. He was the religiously liberal son of an Anglican vicar and even worked briefly as a Unitarian minister before returning to the Church of England. But whatever it is about the Rime, you're not comfortable with it, and you must listen to your scruples.

I hope this was helpful and I hope others will make suggestions, too. Good luck, Daddy.

"Hiawatha" has a nice rhythm to it (although I have no idea if it is now considered politically incorrect). "Winken, Blinken and Nod" (Eugene Field) is a good bedtime poem, perhaps for younger children. My son liked Ogden Nash's "Adventures of Isabel", which has the advantage of promoting feminism, since "Isabel continued, self reliant" after running into that giant.

Perhaps a four-year-old would enjoy a riddle poem, like "Clouds" by Cristina Rosetti,or "Little Lamb, who made thee?" by William Blake (I remember that my son nailed the answer to that one when he was 2 or 3, despite my atheism). Lewis Carrol and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote some rhythmic poems for children, although "The Walrus and the Carpenter" is almost as creepy as Ancient Mariner. I loved "The Highwayman" as a kid, although death stalks that poem, too.