Children, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (b. 1807 - d. 1882),
Harvard professor and lifelong poet who experimented
with many styles throughout his production, including Free Verse.
He garnered instant fame with his first poetry books,
Voices of the Night (1939) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).
"Children" is part of Birds of Passage and was written in 1858.

Come to me, O ye children!
  For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
  Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
  That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
  And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
  In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
  And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
  If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
  Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
  With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
  Have been hardened into wood,—

That to the world are children;
  Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
  Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!
  And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
  In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,
  And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
  And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
  That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
  And all the rest are dead.



(Note: The theme of the dichotomy Dead / Alive, otherwise referred to as Awake / Asleep, is the most prevalent and celebrated theme among the best remembered works of the great poets of history.  This theme is anchored in millennia-old archetypes and conveys a hidden psychological message about the state of mind in which it is best to live.  Most of the poems posted on this website express that theme in one way or another; such is the case in, for example, Walt Whitman's "O Me! O Life!", e.e. cummings's "since feeling is first", Robert Frost's "The road not taken", John Donne's "Death be not proud", and William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 69" and "Sonnet 94".

This very same theme may also be found frequently among the lyrics of contemporary popular music, and its presence seems to correlate with whether a song will still be played [and/or held in high esteem] decades after its composition and initial release.  For an example of this trend, and an accompanying analysis, see Ever wonder what Hotel California means?)