Innocence and Growing up

The poems “Fern Hill”, “The Video”, “My Papa’s Waltz”, and “Bored” are poems that deal with youth and innocence. In many respects, the innocence of youth is the best time in one’s life. People wish they could be young again all the time. These poems are no different. To a certain extent, they exude the theme that “youth is wasted on the young”. However, the most important aspect of each of these poems is each one’s dealing with growing up, or passing into adulthood. All of the poems hark back to childhood longingly and suggest that growing up is a rough time. As the characters mature, they seem to miss what they had in their youth and, to a certain extent, they each want that innocence back.
“Fern Hill” spends most of the poem talking about childhood. However, the poem also conveys an awareness of time’s passing. The speaker is describing his childhood and it seems that his awareness of time has grown as he has matured. The speaker says “I was green and carefree” (Thomas, 9) in describing his childhood innocence. He contrasts this with his state now, after he has “(followed time) out of grace” (Thomas, 44) because he is in “the mercy of (time’s) means” (Thomas 51). Thus, one can infer, if the speaker says that he has fallen from grace, that he wishes to be young and carefree again.
The poem, “The Video”, describes a child who is forced to “move over a bit” (Adcock, 4) by the birth of a new sibling. Ceri, in her inexperienced youth, is not used to this shared attention and misses her life without her new sibling. This is shown when she “made her go back in” over and over again. Ceri has experienced a part of growing up and wants to go back to the way it used to be.
“My Papa’s Waltz” can be understood as a story of a young boy growing up. The boy is dancing with his father- he is learning from him. He is following his father’s footsteps literally. He is also following his father figuratively- such that he is learning from the steps and the missteps his father takes. “At ever step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle” (Roethke, 11-12). The boy is learning from his father’s mistakes, but it is a rough and painful learning. The boy would probably rather not have to learn this way. He would not want to learn about growing up and being a man in a way that is rough and painful.
In “Bored”, the speaker describes a longing for the past that is different than the other poems. The speaker wants to go back because she never appreciated her father as a child. She would always get bored when they were working together on seemingly boring tasks. She wants to go back because “now (she) would know” to appreciate her father (Atwood, 39); now she would know that innocence does not last forever and nor do people. She indirectly describes the pain she experienced growing up- the pain of losing her father- and she wishes that she could go back to before she had to experience this pain, back to the innocence of before.
Thus, each of these poems describes childhood as a time of carefree innocence. They each also tell the reader that growing up is inevitable- and rough. They are telling the young to appreciate what they have and take advantage of it. However, one wonders if the innocence that the young possess will preclude them from taking this lesson to heart.