Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A CHILD'S PITY, by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: No sweeter thing than children's ways and wiles Last Line: To life's last end. Subject(s): Children; Love; Childhood | ||||||||
No sweeter thing than children's ways and wiles, Surely, we say, can gladden eyes and ears: Yet sometime sweeter than their words or smiles Are even their tears. To one for once a piteous tale was read, How, when the murderous mother crocodile Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead, Starved, by the Nile. In vast green reed-beds on the vast gray slime Those monsters motherless and helpless lay, Perishing only for the parent's crime Whose seed were they. Hours after, toward the dusk, our blithe small bird Of Paradise, who has our hearts in keeping, Was heard or seen, but hardly seen or heard, For pity weeping. He was so sorry, sitting still apart, For the poor little crocodiles, he said. Six years had given him, for an angel's heart, A child's instead. Feigned tears the false beast shed for murderous ends, We know from travellers' tales of crocodiles: But these tears wept upon them of my friend's Outshine his smiles. What heavenliest angels of what heavenly city Could match the heavenly heart in children here? The heart that hallowing all things with its pity Casts out all fear? So lovely, so divine, so dear their laughter Seems to us, we know not what could be more dear: But lovelier yet we see the sign thereafter Of such a tear. With sense of love half laughing and half weeping We met your tears, our small sweet-spirited friend: Let your love have us in its heavenly keeping To life's last end. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE THREE CHILDREN by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN CHILDREN SELECTING BOOKS IN A LIBRARY by RANDALL JARRELL COME TO THE STONE ... by RANDALL JARRELL THE LOST WORLD by RANDALL JARRELL A SICK CHILD by RANDALL JARRELL CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS IN CHILDHOOD by DONALD JUSTICE THE POET AT SEVEN by DONALD JUSTICE A BALLAD OF DEATH by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE |
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