To A Child
Christopher Morley 1890 (Haverford) – 1957
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee-
And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build;
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!
In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange divinity still kept.
Being, that now absorbs you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shred into perplexing bits,-
Oh, contradictions of the wits!
And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
may make you poet, too, in time-
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 21, 2023
- 41 sec read
- 364 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH XXII JJKK |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 796 |
Words | 136 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"To A Child" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/6091/to-a-child>.
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