|  A
little over a year ago, the subject for this column was Old
Age. It seemed appropriate to look also at the other end of
life this week, so our topic is Children and Childhood. Here is
a well-known breakdown of children's characteristics based on
their birthdays, and this week we will see most of these aspects
in the subjects of our poems.
Monday’s
child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child has to work for it’s living,
But a child that’s born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good and gay.
 We
have touched on aspects of this subject before: exactly two years
ago, our topic was Lullabies,
and this illuminates one of the aspects of this week’s topic.
While a few of our Old Age poems were written by elderly poets,
I have not found examples of children’s poems that discuss childhood,
although I have quoted poetry by children at times in these columns.
Very early in these columns I discussed poems written for children;
and one of these, Matilda
(Who Told Lies, and was Burned to Death) by Hilaire Belloc
(1870 – 1953) from his collection Cautionary Tales, could be regarded
as being about children! Generally, however, poems about children
and childhood are written by adults, and they can be classified
as relating to the poet’s own childhood, his or her own children,
children in general as objects to show innocence, or to evoke
sympathy. There is a subclass of what could be called funerary
poems, written to mourn the death of a child, either the poet’s
own, or the child of a friend.
Perhaps the
best-known poem relating to childhood is William Wordsworth’s
(1770 – 1850) ‘Great Ode’, Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood, of which this is an extract:
Our birth
is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
Wordsworth
also wrote in We Are Seven, in 1798:
A simple
child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
This concept
of the untroubled child occurs fairly frequently, and Elizabeth
Akers Allen (1832 – 1911), in Rock me to Sleep (1860)
expresses the desire of the troubled adult to return to that state:
Backward,
turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
I have to
say, based on my own earliest memories, that this image of the
‘untroubled child’ must relate to a very early stage indeed!
Alexander
Pope (1688 – 1744) in An Essay on Man. Epistle II, l.275,
also speaks of the innocence of the child, and has a somewhat
bitter little coda on the older youth:
Behold
the child, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
 Along
the same lines, I have previously quoted Lewis Carroll’s (Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832 – 1898) Introduction to Through
the Looking Glass (1872), which is addressed to young Alice
Liddell:
Child of
pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale.
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892) has an interesting poem describing the imprinting
of experiences on a young child, There Was a Child Went Forth.
Here is the opening, and the final couplet:
There was
a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain
part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early
lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red
clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and
the mare's foal and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the
fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the
beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became
part of him.
*
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt
marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and
who now goes, and will always go forth every day.
William Blake
(1757 – 1827) wrote a series of poems, largely directed towards
children, called Songs of Innocence (1789 – 1790). Here
is the Introduction:
Piping
down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
'Pipe a
song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again.'
So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy
pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper,
sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made
a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
I have to
admit that I don’t particularly enjoy his Songs of Innocence;
I much prefer his Songs of Experience. Here, however,
is one of the poems, Infant Joy:
'I have
no name;
I am but two days old.'
What shall I call thee?
'I happy am,
Joy is my name.'
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty
joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!
This is a
Cradle Song from his Songs of Experience:
Sleep,
sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep
Sweet babe,
in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy
softest limbs I feel
Smiles as of the morning steal
O’er thy cheek, and o’er thy breast
Where the little heart doth rest.
O the cunning
wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful night shall break.
 By
way of contrast, here is a rather sugary Cradle Song
from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892):
What does
little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till thy little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.
What does
little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.
Baby, sleep a little longer,
Till thy little limbs are stronger.
If she sleeps a little longer,
Baby too shall fly away.
The image
of a sleeping child is very powerful, and recurs several times:
here is a small poem on this topic by William Cowper (1731 - 1800),
Lines on a Sleeping Infant:
Sweet babe!
whose image here express’d
Does thy peaceful slumbers show;
Guilt or fear, to break thy rest,
Never did thy spirit know.
Soothing slumbers! soft repose,
Such as mock the painter’s skill,
Such as innocence bestows,
Harmless infant! lull thee still.
It is easy
for poems of this kind to cross the border into syrupy sentimentality.
Here is a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825 – 1911),
Thank God for Little Children, that gets very close to
this boundary (and then crosses it):
Thank God
for little children,
Bright flowers by earth's wayside,
The dancing, joyous lifeboats
Upon life's stormy tide.
Thank God
for little children;
When our skies are cold and gray,
They come as sunshine to our hearts,
And charm our cares away.
I almost think the angels,
Who tend life's garden fair,
Drop down the sweet wild blossoms
That bloom around us here.
It seems a breath of heaven
Round many a cradle lies,
And every little baby
Brings a message from the skies.
Dear mothers, guard these jewels.
As sacred offerings meet,
A wealth of household treasures
To lay at Jesus' feet.
 This
kind of verse is more understandable when you realize that in
previous centuries child mortality was distressingly high. It
has been estimated that in 1899, 136 out of 1000 newborns would
die before their first birthday. Among the working classes, half
of all children died before the age of five. Before the 19th century
this was dealt with by almost not acknowledging the existence
of children until they had passed the most perilous years, but
the Victorians embraced all children and developed the concept
of “childhood” that we know today. In many cases this idealizing
of the child led to an overly sentimental posturing, but William
Butler Yeats (1867 – 1939) in his poem A Prayer for my Daughter
certainly avoids this trap:
Once more
the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have
walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
This theme
of the poet’s feeling of responsibility for the development of
the young child is also dealt with by Nigel Walker in his poem
Marooned (for
Rebecca) that won our poetry competition. Here are a
few lines to remind you from the beginning and the close:
You have
bobbed up into my arms
little jetsam, shipwrecked on my shore
though not, perhaps, from choice,
comfortable as you were
berthed in your mother's waters.
This island
is not best traversed alone.
Learning the paths which lead you to the safest fruit
takes time.
I found a
book a little while ago entitled Parlour
Poetry A Casquet of Gems selected and introduced by Michael
A. Turner. This was first published in 1969; I have drawn from
this book for the next few items.
In the late
nineteenth century, it was common for social gatherings to be
held in the parlours (what we would now call sitting rooms, I
suppose) of middle class homes. During these, family members might
play the piano, and others might sing. In addition, as Turner
says, “Countless children committed poems of the highest moral
rectitude to memory, poems with plain, easy rhythms, uncomplicated
heroics, and unabashed pathos.” These would then be declaimed
at these gatherings. One class of these poems related to children,
and often the children would be poor and sick; and as often as
not would die. Usually, they would be orphans, and often they
would be confined to ‘workhouses’ which were places where the
impoverished were housed, performing menial tasks in return for
their keep.
 Gerald
Massey (1828 – 1907) was the son of an English canal boatman,
and at the age of eight he was put to work in a silk mill. Later
he worked as a straw plaiter. Reading became a passion, and he
developed an ambition to be a poet: he published a book of verse
when he was twenty. His life was devoted to Christian Socialism,
and he became known as the “poet of liberty, labour, and the people”.
He wrote a poem called Little Willie, about a poor boy
dying young. Little Willie is an international character, and
his creation is often credited to Julia Moore (1847 – 1920), “The
Sweet Singer of Michigan”, who has appeared in these pages before.
Her poem dates from 1876, so Massey predates her! Here are the
first and last stanzas of his poem:
Poor little
Willie,
With his many pretty wiles;
Worlds of wisdom in his look,
And quaint, quiet smiles;
Hair of amber, touched with
Gold of Heaven so brave;
All lying darkly hid
In a workhouse grave.
---o---
No room
for little Willie
In the world he had no part;
On him stared the Gorgon-eye
Through which looks no heart.
“Come to me,” said Heaven;
And if Heaven will save,
Little matters though the door
Be a work-house grave.
Colonel John
Hay (1838 – 1905) came from Salem, Indiana. He was a lawyer who
became Aide de Camp to President Lincoln. Later, he was Ambassador
to England and Secretary of State. In 1871 he published a collection
of poems called Pike Country Ballads. These were written
in the Western dialect that was currently being popularized by
Mark Twain and Bret Harte. One of these was Little Breeches,
which begins:
I don’t
go much on religion,
I never ain’t had no show;
But I’ve got a middlin’ tight grip, sir,
On the handful o’ things I know.
I don’t pan out on the prophets,
And free-will and that sort of
thing, -
But I b’lieve in God and the angels,
Ever since one night last spring.
He goes into
town for some turnips, taking his four-year old son Gabe “Little
Breeches” with him. While they are going into town the snow comes
down, and as the poet is in the store the wagon team is spooked
and heads off, with Little Breeches. They eventually find the
team and the wagon buried under the snow, but there is no sign
of little Gabe. They eventually find him in a sheepfold, in a
little shed where they kept the lambs at night. This is the closing
stanza:
How did
he git thar? Angels.
He could never have walked in
that storm:
They jest scooped down and toted him
To whar it was safe and warm.
And I think that saving a little child,
And fotching him to his own,
Is a darned sight better business
Than loafing around The Throne.
As I said
above, there were several poems in the nineteenth century about
orphans: perhaps the most famous is The Orphan Boy’s Tale
by Mrs. Opie. Mrs. Amelia Opie, née Alderson (1769 – 1853)
was something of a character. When she visited the Great Exhibition
in 1851 she was confined to a wheelchair, but it didn’t stop her
challenging another octogenarian to a wheelchair race! Her poem
begins:
“Stay,
lady, stay, for mercy’s sake
And hear a helpless orphan’s tale,
Ah! sure my looks must pity wake;
‘Tis want that makes my cheek
so pale.
Yet I was once a mother’s pride,
And my brave father’s hope and
joy,
But in the Nile’s proud fight he died,
And now I am an orphan boy”.
It was this
poem that led W. S. Gilbert to have Major-General Stanley sing
to the Pirates of Penzance:
O, men
of dark and dismal fate,
Forgo your cruel employ,
Have pity on my lonely state,
I am an orphan boy!
And of course
everybody breaks down in sympathy!
The American
equivalent is Little
Orphan Annie, by James Whitcomb Riley (1849 – 1916),
whose Hoosier dialect poems we have mentioned here before.
Not all of the poems quoted in Turner’s collection are quite so
melodramatic. Here is a gentler piece by Mary Ann Lamb (1765 –
1847), the sister of Charles Lamb, A Child:
A child’s
a plaything for an hour;
Then tire, and lay it by.
Its pretty tricks we try
For that or for a longer space
–
But I knew one that to itself
All seasons could control;
That would have mock’d the sense of pain
Out of a grieved soul.
Thou straggler
into loving arms,
Young climber-up of knees,
When I forget thy thousand ways
Then life and all shall cease.
My first
poem of this week is not from Parlour Poetry, but it
has some of the same Victorian character. It is The
Toys, by Coventry Patmore (1823 – 1896). Coventry Kersey
Dighton Patmore was a poet much admired in his early career. He
was involved with the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, of whom we have written before. His first wife,
whom he married in 1847, was Emily; and the two of them were regarded
as the ideal Victorian couple. His most highly regarded collection
during this period was called The
Angel in the House, and many of the poems related to
their married life. However, she died in 1862, leaving him with
six children. In 1864, on a visit to Rome he met Marianne, who
became his second wife. She was a Roman Catholic, and he converted
to Catholicism. He became associated with a number of people in
the Catholic literary circle in England, and the character of
his writing changed. This may have contributed to a decline in
his popularity, but 1877 he published a collection entitled The
Unknown Eros, and The Toys is from that. Marianne
died in 1880, and Patmore married his children’s governess, Harriet,
who survived him.
Charles Tennyson
Turner (1808 – 1879) wrote a little poem about the early education
of a child – Letty’s Globe:
When Letty
had scarce pass’d her third glad year,
And her young artless words began
to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour’d sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might
mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old
empires peep’d
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers.
How she leap’d,
And laugh’d and prattled in her
world-wide bliss;
But when we turn’d her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry –
‘Oh! yes, I see it, Letty’s home is there!’
And while she hid all England
with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
 I
mentioned earlier that many poems were written about the death
of children, and my second poem of this week is an example. It
is by Phyllis Wheatley (1753 – 1784), A Funeral Poem on the
Death of C. E. an Infant of Twelve Months. Wheatley was the
first black poet in the United States to be published, and I described
her career in our article on Black
Poets, which appeared earlier this year. Born in Senegal,
Africa, around 1753, she was transported to Boston in 1761 to
be sold on the slave market. John Wheatley, a tailor from Boston,
purchased her as a child to serve his wife.
Soon Wheatley
was accepted as a member of the family and Mary Wheatley, John's
daughter, was made her personal tutor. She learned English with
remarkable speed and although she never attended a formal school,
also learned Greek and Latin.
At the age
of 13 Wheatley began writing poetry. Her first published poem
On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin appeared in the Newport
Mercury in 1767. In the following years, a number of poems appeared
in various publications in and around Boston.
She wrote
several funeral poems, including a few concerned with the deaths
of young children.
My last
poem of this week is a sestina - as readers of The Mediadrome
will know, this is a favorite of mine among the Fixed
Forms. It is by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979).
I hope you
enjoy this collection of poems about children and childhood. I
end with a quote from D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930), who wrote of
the adult’s desire to return to his childhood, in Piano
(1920):
Of childish
days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the
past.
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