One Childhood

Life consists of a beginning and an end. In the beginning there is the child who can’t wait to grow up and when the child grows up he/she yearns for those past moment that were taken for granted. Many people take advantage of their childhood and many times they don’t realize what they had until it is gone. In the poems Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas, The Video by Fleur Adcock, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke and Bored by Margaret Atwood, the speakers are reminiscing on childhood experiences that they miss, now that they are grown up. As children we tend to ignore and take for granted the things that matter and make us happy, so when we get older all we are left with his yearning and longing for those childhood experiences.

In Thomas’ Fern Hill, the speaker is recollecting on the time he spent at his barn. He uses metaphors such as “holly streams” and “fire green as grass” to make the juxtaposition between the boy and the location more natural. He constantly repeats words such as green, golden, light and white to embellish the idea of innocence and purity; the innocence of his childhood joy and pleasure that he found in nature. However, he eventually gets old and he is no longer able to find that pleasure that he once did as a child. He says in line 51, “And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land,” here he references the lost of innocence as you get older and all that is left is yearning for that innocence and purity.

In Adcock’s The Video, the speaker describes the feeling and reaction of Ceri when her little sister Laura is born. The speaker never states the feelings of Ceri but rather expresses the actions of Ceri, allowing the audience to determine the feelings. The author mentions that after Laura was born the mom was twice as busy. In the final lines the speaker says, “She watched Laura come out, and then, in reverse, she made her go back in.” Here the author is telling the reader that Ceri wants Laura to go back in so things can go back to normal. She longs for the past where her mother wasn’t as busy and she got all the attention. By being an older sister she has grown up, which means things aren’t going to be the same.

In Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz, the author shows that people still yearn for childhood memories even if the memories aren’t the most pleasant. This poem is about a father dancing with his son before his bedtime. When the speaker says, “At every step you missed/ My right ear scrapped a buckle,” he remembers the rough play that he and his father did before bedtime. Although at times it hurt to play, in the end it was worth it. It was a bonding experience that the boy had with his father. The tone of the speaker is pining; he desires that fun playful relationship he had with his father as child. The relationship he had lost when he grew up.

In Atwood’s Bored, the speaker talks about how bored she was when she worked with her father. In lines two through eight she mentions all the things she did with her father and how bored she was when she performed the tasks. However, at the end poem she says. “Now I wouldn’t be bored. Now I would know too much. Now I would know.” The speaker looking back at her time spent with her father wasn’t boring. She realizes that she took advantage of the time and now understands, appreciates and yearns for an opportunity to do again.

Many people don’t understand the importance of childhood; they disregard the fact that each person has only one childhood. Instead of trying to escape it and grow up, the youth must learn to enjoy it before it is too late. Many times we find ourselves looking back at what use to be, but instead of getting upset we should find joy in our past pleasures and happiness.