Children and Nature

Children and Nature To be a child again! With eyes so bright To revel in nature, to see with awe To admire the stars and the moon in the night To know and understand what it’s like to be small The children, they still know the magic of earth They have not become too busy to see Nature and its beauty and all of its worth And the splendor that has been lost to me We rush and we hurry throughout the day We don’t take a minute, we won’t take an hour To do like the children and take time to play To lay in the grass, to admire a flower I watch them and see their simple joys They don’t need much to make them smile What we see as plain, they love and enjoy Children understand the best life style They know the smell of books, the taste of tears The warmth of hugs, and the cold of snow They know the night time chill of monster fears And the promise of time still to grow Children have an awe of life when they’re so small And from them we have so much we can learn I wonder—why do they want to grow at all? Instead, to childhood we should all return. I watched a child, her happiness so pure Where does this go as we grow and mature? I wrote this poem in the style of William Wordsworth. William often wrote with common language, preferring natural sounding words over the lofty and pretentious sounding poetry of the day. Therefore, I tried to write simply and without using many elaborate metaphors. But at the same time, he definitely tried to make his poems flow and have a very lyrical rhyming pattern. One of his most common styles was ABAB CDCD EFEF, etcetera (which is what I followed in my poem). He also wrote often in stanzas of eight lines, which is also what I did in my imitation poem. One of his themes was of children’s connection to nature, and how people often lose this connection as they grow up. I wrote my poem on this theme as well, loosely based on his “Intimations of Immortality.” Out of all the Romantic poets, Wordsworth tried to connect to human feeling the most, which is why I liked his poetry the best. I also liked how he did not use elaborate language because his simple analogies and images make his poetry still understandable and relatable, even today.