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
356

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

Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley was accepted to UCLA in 1969 with a major in mathematics. more…

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