Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A CHILD, by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A CHILD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The greatest poem ever known
Last Line: When you were poetry itself!
Alternate Author Name(s): Hall, Galway
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


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 pretence!

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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