--- title: Childhood date: 2006-12-10T13:53:18Z modified: 2006-12-10T13:53:18Z permalink: "https://www.poetryoflife.com/childhood/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 73 categories: - Life Poems author: Praveen Kumar timestamp: 2006-12-10T13:53:18Z tags: - Life Poems --- Childhood, sweet and sunny childhood, With its careless, thoughtless air, Like the verdant, tangled wildwood, Wants the training hand of care. See it springing all around us — Glad to know, and quick to learn; Asking [questions](https://www.poetryoflife.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/post/questions-of-life.md) that confound us; Teaching lessons in its turn. Who loves not its joyous revel, Leaping lightly on the lawn, Up the knoll, along the level, Free and graceful as a fawn Let it revel; it is nature Giving to the little dears Strength of limb, and healthful features, For the toil of coming years. He who checks a child with terror, Stops its play, and stills its song, Not alone commits an error, But a great and moral wrong. Give it play, and never fear it — Active life is no defect; Never, never break its spirit — Curb it only to direct. Would you dam the flowing [river](https://www.poetryoflife.com/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/post/river-of-life.md), Thinking it would cease to flow Onward it must go forever — Better teach it where to go. Childhood is a fountain welling, Trace its channel in the sand, And its currents, spreading, swelling, Will revive the withered land. Childhood is the vernal season; Trim and train the tender shoot; Love is to the coming reason, As the blossom to the fruit. Tender twigs are bent and folded — Art to nature beauty lends; Childhood easily is moulded; Manhood breaks, but seldom bends. by David Bates