Optima dies prima fugit.
In the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee.
Vergil, from his Georgics.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Horace - Odes 1.4 Ernest Dowson, trans.
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily:
Life is but a dream.
Traditional, first published 1881.
Compared to other animals our human childhood takes forever. Yet most mature adults mourn the loss of youth. We have found a treasure there, or rather then, that is irretrievable: the field is lost. The brain of a young child certainly exhibits a genius of plasticity, adaptation and absorption that our older, well-pruned neural pathways—I did not say "ruts"—cannot match. A child's senses are keen and everything seems new and fresh. The imprints go deep, for which we are grateful later even as we mourn, since those early impressions help us remember a little of what life felt like back then.
Rebecca Nye asks us to consider the child as process. And poets have been doing so for a long time, both in terms of noticing the stages of development and of attempting to capture a particular phase of that development. Of course, we can notice through time the shifting of attitudes towards the child: there is evidence enough in what follows of adult indifference and ambivalence in this regard. Still, it might be helpful to make a timeline of poets' contributions in this area, as Montessori students are wont to do. As I spend time with these poems, they begin to speak to, to resonate with each other, back and forth across the timeline. So let's begin with the Greeks—Solon, the Athenian law-giver, to be precise:
In seven years from th' earliest breath,
The child puts forth his hedge of teeth;
When strengthened by a similar span,
He first displays some signs of man.
As in a third, his limbs increase,
A beard buds o'er his changing face.
When he has passed a fourth such time,
His strength and vigor's in its prime.
When five times seven years o'er his head
Have passed, the man should think to wed;
At forty two, the wisdom's clear
To shun vile deed of folly or fear:
While seven times seven years to sense
Add ready wit and eloquence.
And seven years further skill admit
To raise them to their perfect height.
When nine such periods have passed,
His powers, though milder grown, still last;
When God has granted ten times seven,
The aged man prepares for heaven.[1]
Hippocrates, father of the Oath, held a more jaundiced position on the qualities of late maturity than Solon, and so I must resign myself this winter on my 56th birthday to pass through the rickety gates of Old Age.[2] No doubt Shakespeare's famous lines spoken by Jacques in Act 2, Scene 7 of As You Like It owed a debt to this classical tradition of patterns of seven:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.[3]
Colonial New England poet Anne Bradstreet adds a touch of Puritan dourness to her "The Four Ages of Man," while echoing some of Shakespeare's language:
Introduction
Lo now! four other acts upon the stage,
Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age.
The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water,
Unstable, supple, moist, and cold’s his Nature.
The second: frolic claims his pedigree;
From blood and air, for hot and moist is he.
The third of fire and choler is compos’d,
Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos’d.
The last, of earth and heavy melancholy,
Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly.
Childhood was cloth’d in white, and given to show,
His spring was intermixed with some snow.
Upon his head a Garland Nature set:
Of Daisy, Primrose, and the Violet.
Such cold mean flowers (as these) blossom betime,
Before the Sun hath throughly warm’d the clime.
His hobby striding, did not ride, but run,
And in his hand an hour-glass new begun,
In dangers every moment of a fall,
And when ‘tis broke, then ends his life and all.
But if he held till it have run its last,
Then may he live till threescore years or past.
Next, youth came up in gorgeous attire
(As that fond age, doth most of all desire),
His Suit of Crimson, and his Scarf of Green.
In’s countenance, his pride quickly was seen.
Garland of Roses, Pinks, and Gillyflowers
Seemed to grow on’s head (bedew’d with showers).
His face as fresh, as is Aurora fair,
When blushing first, she ‘gins to red the Air.
No wooden horse, but one of metal try’d:
He seems to fly, or swim, and not to ride.
Then prancing on the Stage, about he wheels;
But as he went, death waited at his heels.
The next came up, in a more graver sort,
As one that cared for a good report.
His Sword by’s side, and choler in his eyes,
But neither us’d (as yet) for he was wise,
Of Autumn fruits a basket on his arm,
His golden rod in’s purse, which was his charm.
And last of all, to act upon this Stage,
Leaning upon his staff, comes up old age.
Under his arm a Sheaf of wheat he bore,
A Harvest of the best: what needs he more?
In’s other hand a glass, ev’n almost run,
This writ about: This out, then I am done.
His hoary hairs and grave aspect made way,
And all gave ear to what he had to say.
These being met, each in his equipage
Intend to speak, according to their age,
But wise Old-age did with all gravity
To childish childhood give precedency,
And to the rest, his reason mildly told:
That he was young, before he grew so old.
To do as he, the rest full soon assents,
Their method was that of the Elements,
That each should tell what of himself he knew,
Both good and bad, but yet no more then’s true.
With heed now stood, three ages of frail man,
To hear the child, who crying, thus began.
Childhood
Ah me! conceiv’d in sin, and born in sorrow,
A nothing, here to day, but gone to morrow,
Whose mean beginning, blushing can’t reveal,
But night and darkness must with shame conceal.
My mother’s breeding sickness, I will spare,
Her nine months’ weary burden not declare.
To shew her bearing pangs, I should do wrong,
To tell that pain, which can’t be told by tongue.
With tears into this world I did arrive;
My mother still did waste, as I did thrive,
Who yet with love and all alacrity,
Spending was willing to be spent for me.
With wayward cries, I did disturb her rest,
Who sought still to appease me with her breast;
With weary arms, she danc’d, and By, By, sung,
When wretched I (ungrate) had done the wrong.
When Infancy was past, my Childishness
Did act all folly that it could express.
My silliness did only take delight,
In that which riper age did scorn and slight,
In Rattles, Bables, and such toyish stuff.
My then ambitious thoughts were low enough.
My high-born soul so straitly was confin’d
That its own worth it did not know nor mind.
This little house of flesh did spacious count,
Through ignorance, all troubles did surmount,
Yet this advantage had mine ignorance,
Freedom from Envy and from Arrogance.
How to be rich, or great, I did not cark,
A Baron or a Duke ne’r made my mark,
Nor studious was, Kings favours how to buy,
With costly presents, or base flattery;
No office coveted, wherein I might
Make strong my self and turn aside weak right.
No malice bare to this or that great Peer,
Nor unto buzzing whisperers gave ear.
I gave no hand, nor vote, for death, of life.
I’d nought to do, ‘twixt Prince, and peoples’ strife.
No Statist I: nor Marti’list i’ th’ field.
Where e’re I went, mine innocence was shield.
My quarrels, not for Diadems, did rise,
But for an Apple, Plumb, or some such prize.
My strokes did cause no death, nor wounds, nor scars.
My little wrath did cease soon as my wars.
My duel was no challenge, nor did seek.
My foe should weltering, with his bowels reek.
I had no Suits at law, neighbours to vex,
Nor evidence for land did me perplex.
I fear’d no storms, nor all the winds that blows.
I had no ships at Sea, no fraughts to loose.
I fear’d no drought, nor wet; I had no crop,
Nor yet on future things did place my hope.
This was mine innocence, but oh the seeds
Lay raked up of all the cursed weeds,
Which sprouted forth in my insuing age,
As he can tell, that next comes on the stage.
But yet me let me relate, before I go,
The sins and dangers I am subject to:
From birth stained, with Adam’s sinful fact,
From thence I ‘gan to sin, as soon as act;
A perverse will, a love to what’s forbid;
A serpent’s sting in pleasing face lay hid;
A lying tongue as soon as it could speak
And fifth Commandment do daily break;
Oft stubborn, peevish, sullen, pout, and cry;
Then nought can please, and yet I know not why.
As many was my sins, so dangers too,
For sin brings sorrow, sickness, death, and woe,
And though I miss the tossings of the mind,
Yet griefs in my frail flesh I still do find.
What gripes of wind, mine infancy did pain?
What tortures I, in breeding teeth sustain?
What crudities my cold stomach hath bred?
Whence vomits, worms, and flux have issued?
What breaches, knocks, and falls I daily have?
And some perhaps, I carry to my grave.
Sometimes in fire, sometimes in water fall:
Strangely preserv’d, yet mind it not at all.
At home, abroad, my danger’s manifold
That wonder ‘tis, my glass till now doth hold.
I’ve done: unto my elders I give way,
For ‘tis but little that a child can say.
Youth
My goodly clothing and beauteous skin
Declare some greater riches are within,
But what is best I‘ll first present to view,
And then the worst, in a more ugly hue,
For thus to do we on this Stage assemble,
Then let not him, which hath most craft dissemble.
Mine education, and my learning‘s such,
As might my self, and others, profit much:
With nurture trained up in virtue‘s Schools;
Of Science, Arts, and Tongues, I know the rules;
The manners of the Court, I likewise know,
Nor ignorant what they in Country do.
The brave attempts of valiant Knights I prize
That dare climb Battlements, rear‘d to the skies.
The snorting Horse, the Trumpet, Drum I like,
The glist‘ring Sword, and well advanced Pike.
I cannot lie in trench before a Town,
Nor wait til good advice our hopes do crown.
I scorn the heavy Corslet, Musket-proof;
I fly to catch the Bullet that‘s aloof.
Though thus in field, at home, to all most kind,
So affable that I do suit each mind,
I can insinuate into the breast
And by my mirth can raise the heart deprest.
Sweet Music rapteth my harmonious Soul,
And elevates my thoughts above the Pole.
My wit, my bounty, and my courtesy
Makes all to place their future hopes on me.
This is my best, but youth (is known) alas,
To be as wild as is the snuffing Ass,
As vain as froth, as vanity can be,
That who would see vain man may look on me:
My gifts abus‘d, my education lost,
My woful Parents‘ longing hopes all crost;
My wit evaporates in merriment;
My valour in some beastly quarrel‘s spent;
Martial deeds I love not, ‘cause they’re virtuous,
But doing so, might seem magnanimous.
My Lust doth hurry me to all that’s ill,
I know no Law, nor reason, but my will;
Sometimes lay wait to take a wealthy purse
Or stab the man in’s own defence, that’s worse.
Sometimes I cheat (unkind) a female Heir
Of all at once, who not so wise, as fair,
Trusteth my loving looks and glozing tongue
Until her friends, treasure, and honour’s gone.
Sometimes I sit carousing others’ health
Until mine own be gone, my wit, and wealth.
From pipe to pot, from pot to words and blows,
For he that loveth Wine wanteth no woes.
Days, nights, with Ruffins, Roarers, Fiddlers spend,
To all obscenity my ears I bend,
All counsel hate which tends to make me wise,
And dearest friends count for mine enemies.
If any care I take, ‘tis to be fine,
For sure my suit more than my virtues shine.
If any time from company I spare,
‘Tis spent in curling, frisling up my hair,
Some young Adonais I do strive to be.
Sardana Pallas now survives in me.
Cards, Dice, and Oaths, concomitant, I love;
To Masques, to Plays, to Taverns still I move;
And in a word, if what I am you’d hear,
Seek out a British, bruitish Cavalier.
Such wretch, such monster am I; but yet more
I want a heart all this for to deplore.
Thus, thus alas! I have mispent my time,
My youth, my best, my strength, my bud, and prime,
Remembring not the dreadful day of Doom,
Nor yet the heavy reckoning for to come,
Though dangers do attend me every hour
And ghastly death oft threats me with her power:
Sometimes by wounds in idle combats taken,
Sometimes by Agues all my body shaken;
Sometimes by Fevers, all my moisture drinking,
My heart lies frying, and my eyes are sinking.
Sometimes the Cough, Stitch, painful Pleurisy,
With sad affrights of death, do menace me.
Sometimes the loathsome Pox my face be-mars
With ugly marks of his eternal scars.
Sometimes the Frenzy strangely mads my Brain
That oft for it in Bedlam I remain.
Too many’s my Diseases to recite,
That wonder ‘tis I yet behold the light,
That yet my bed in darkness is not made,
And I in black oblivion’s den long laid.
Of Marrow full my bones, of Milk my breasts,
Ceas’d by the gripes of Serjeant Death's Arrests:
Thus I have said, and what I’ve said you see,
Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.
Middle Age
Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I’ve seen,
And now am grown more staid that have been green,
What they have done, the same was done by me:
As was their praise, or shame, so mine must be.
Now age is more, more good ye do expect;
But more my age, the more is my defect.
But what’s of worth, your eyes shall first behold,
And then a world of dross among my gold.
When my Wild Oats were sown, and ripe, and mown,
I then receiv’d a harvest of mine own.
My reason, then bad judge, how little hope
Such empty seed should yield a better crop.
I then with both hands graspt the world together,
Thus out of one extreme into another,
But yet laid hold on virtue seemingly:
Who climbs without hold, climbs dangerously.
Be my condition mean, I then take pains
My family to keep, but not for gains.
If rich, I’m urged then to gather more
To bear me out i’ th’ world and feed the poor;
If a father, then for children must provide,
But if none, then for kindred near ally’d;
If Noble, then mine honour to maintain;
If not, yet wealth, Nobility can gain.
For time, for place, likewise for each relation,
I wanted not my ready allegation.
Yet all my powers for self-ends are not spent,
For hundreds bless me for my bounty sent,
Whose loins I’ve cloth’d, and bellies I have fed,
With mine own fleece, and with my household bread.
Yea, justice I have done, was I in place,
To cheer the good and wicked to deface.
The proud I crush’d, th’oppressed I set free,
The liars curb’d but nourisht verity.
Was I a pastor, I my flock did feed
And gently lead the lambs, as they had need.
A Captain I, with skill I train’d my band
And shew’d them how in face of foes to stand.
If a Soldier, with speed I did obey
As readily as could my Leader say.
Was I a laborer, I wrought all day
As cheerfully as ere I took my pay.
Thus hath mine age (in all) sometimes done well;
Sometimes mine age (in all) been worse than hell.
In meanness, greatness, riches, poverty
Did toil, did broil; oppress’d, did steal and lie.
Was I as poor as poverty could be,
Then baseness was companion unto me.
Such scum as Hedges and High-ways do yield,
As neither sow, nor reap, nor plant, nor build.
If to Agriculture I was ordain’d,
Great labours, sorrows, crosses I sustain’d.
The early Cock did summon, but in vain,
My wakeful thoughts up to my painful gain.
For restless day and night, I’m robb’d of sleep
By cankered care, who sentinel doth keep.
My weary breast rest from his toil can find,
But if I rest, the more distrest my mind.
If happiness my sordidness hath found,
‘Twas in the crop of my manured ground:
My fatted Ox, and my exuberous Cow,
My fleeced Ewe, and ever farrowing Sow.
To greater things I never did aspire,
My dunghill thoughts or hopes could reach no higher.
If to be rich, or great, it was my fate.
How was I broil’d with envy, and with hate?
Greater than was the great’st was my desire,
And greater still, did set my heart on fire.
If honour was the point to which I steer’d,
To run my hull upon disgrace I fear’d,
But by ambitious sails I was so carried
That over flats, and sands, and rocks I hurried,
Opprest, and sunk, and sack’d, all in my way
That did oppose me to my longed bay.
My thirst was higher than Nobility
And oft long’d sore to taste on Royalty,
Whence poison, Pistols, and dread instruments
Have been curst furtherers of mine intents.
Nor Brothers, Nephews, Sons, nor Sires I’ve spar’d.
When to a Monarchy my way they barr'’d,
There set, I rid my self straight out of hand
Of such as might my son, or his withstand,
Then heapt up gold and riches as the clay,
Which others scatter like the dew in May.
Sometimes vain-glory is the only bait
Whereby my empty school is lur’d and caught.
Be I of worth, of learning, or of parts,
I judge I should have room in all men’s hearts;
And envy gnaws if any do surmount.
I hate for to be had in small account.
If Bias like, I’m stript unto my skin;
I glory in my wealth I have within.
Thus good, and bad, and what I am, you see,
Now in a word, what my diseases be:
The vexing Stone, in bladder and in reins,
Torments me with intolerable pains;
The windy cholic oft my bowels rend,
To break the darksome prison, where it’s penn’d;
The knotty Gout doth sadly torture me,
And the restraining lame Sciatica;
The Quinsy and the Fevers often distaste me,
And the Consumption to the bones doth waste me,
Subject to all Diseases, that’s the truth,
Though some more incident to age, or youth;
And to conclude, I may not tedious be,
Man at his best estate is vanity.
Old Age
What you have been, ev’n such have I before,
And all you say, say I, and something more.
Babe's innocence, Youth’s wildness I have seen,
And in perplexed Middle-age have been,
Sickness, dangers, and anxieties have past,
And on this Stage am come to act my last.
I have been young, and strong, and wise as you
But now, Bis pueri senes is too true.
In every Age I’ve found much vanity.
An end of all perfection now I see.
It’s not my valour, honour, nor my gold,
My ruin’d house, now falling can uphold;
It’s not my Learning, Rhetoric, wit so large,
Now hath the power, Death’s Warfare, to discharge.
It’s not my goodly house, nor bed of down,
That can refresh, or ease, if Conscience frown;
Nor from alliance now can I have hope,
But what I have done well, that is my prop.
He that in youth is godly, wise, and sage
Provides a staff for to support his age.
Great mutations, some joyful, and some sad,
In this short Pilgrimage I oft have had.
Sometimes the Heavens with plenty smil’d on me,
Sometimes, again, rain’d all adversity;
Sometimes in honour, sometimes in disgrace,
Sometime an abject, then again in place:
Such private changes oft mine eyes have seen.
In various times of state I’ve also been.
I’ve seen a Kingdom flourish like a tree
When it was rul’d by that Celestial she,
And like a Cedar others so surmount
That but for shrubs they did themselves account.
Then saw I France, and Holland sav’d, Calais won,
And Philip and Albertus half undone.
I saw all peace at home, terror to foes,
But ah, I saw at last those eyes to close,
And then, me thought, the world at noon grew dark
When it had lost that radiant Sun-like spark.
In midst of griefs, I saw some hopes revive
(For ‘twas our hopes then kept our hearts alive);
I saw hopes dash’t, our forwardness was shent,
And silenc’d we, by Act of Parliament.
I’ve seen from Rome, an execrable thing,
A plot to blow up Nobles and their King.
I’ve seen designs at Ree and Cades cross’t,
And poor Palatinate for every lost.
I’ve seen a Prince to live on others’ lands,
A Royal one, by alms from Subjects’ hands.
I’ve seen base men, advanc’d to great degree,
And worthy ones, put to extremity,
But not their Prince’s love, nor state so high,
Could once reverse, their shameful destiny.
I’ve seen one stabb’d, another lose his head,
And others fly their Country through their dread.
I’ve seen, and so have ye, for ‘tis but late,
The desolation of a goodly State.
Plotted and acted so that none can tell
Who gave the counsell, but the Prince of hell.
I’ve seen a land unmoulded with great pain,
But yet may live to see’t made up again.
I’ve seen it shaken, rent, and soak’d in blood,
But out of troubles ye may see much good.
These are no old wives’ tales, but this is truth.
We old men love to tell, what’s done in youth.
But I return from whence I stept awry;
My memory is short and brain is dry.
My Almond-tree (gray hairs) doth flourish now,
And back, once straight, begins apace to bow.
My grinders now are few, my sight doth fail,
My skin is wrinkled, and my cheeks are pale.
No more rejoice, at music’s pleasant noise,
But do awake at the cock’s clanging voice.
I cannot scent savours of pleasant meat,
Nor sapors find in what I drink or eat.
My hands and arms, once strong, have lost their might.
I cannot labour, nor I cannot fight:
My comely legs, as nimble as the Roe,
Now stiff and numb, can hardly creep or go.
My heart sometimes as fierce, as Lion bold,
Now trembling, and fearful, sad, and cold.
My golden Bowl and silver Cord, e’re long,
Shall both be broke, by wracking death so strong.
I then shall go whence I shall come no more.
Sons, Nephews, leave, my death for to deplore.
In pleasures, and in labours, I have found
That earth can give no consolation sound
To great, to rich, to poor, to young, or old,
To mean, to noble, fearful, or to bold.
From King to beggar, all degrees shall find
But vanity, vexation of the mind.
Yea, knowing much, the pleasant’st life of all
Hath yet amongst that sweet, some bitter gall.
Though reading others’ Works doth much refresh,
Yet studying much brings weariness to th’ flesh.
My studies, labours, readings all are done,
And my last period can e’en elmost run.
Corruption, my Father, I do call,
Mother, and sisters both; the worms that crawl
In my dark house, such kindred I have store.
There I shall rest till heavens shall be no more;
And when this flesh shall rot and be consum’d,
This body, by this soul, shall be assum’d;
And I shall see with these same very eyes
My strong Redeemer coming in the skies.
Triumph I shall, o’re Sin, o’re Death, o’re Hell,
Next, a leap from mid-17th century to the beginning of the 19th, and from a Reformed to a Romantic theology of childhood. Here is one of the most famous of all poems about childhood in English, William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." The fifth stanza is perhaps the most well known, and one that is cited by Maria Montessori.[5] Elsewhere in the ode the influence of the Bard of Avon lingers, as does that of Isaiah. And the epigraph will be familiar as well.
'The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.'
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; -
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
II
The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
III
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday; -
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!
IV
Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel - I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While the Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm: -
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
- But there's a Tree, of many, one,
A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
V
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
VI
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
VII
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
VIII
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, -
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
IX
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: -
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
X
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts today
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.[6]
The 20th century returns us to the concision of the Greeks, but adds a layer of psychological reflection and existential awareness that feels new. This is a 1923 poem by Rainier Maria Rilke, "Imaginary Career," translated by Edward Snow:
First a childhood, boundless and without
negation and goal. O unthinking joy.
Suddenly fright, limit, schoolroom, slavery,
and fall into temptation, into loss.
Defiance. The bent becomes the bender now
and seeks revenge on others, makes them succumb.
Loved, feared; savior, enemy, victor,
vanquisher, role by role.
And then alone in vastness, lightness, cold.
Yet deep in that erected figure
a breathing toward the First, the Ancient...
Then God stepped out of his hiding place.[7]
William Stafford has a genius for capturing a moment, or moments, along the developmental timeline. In these next three poems we are coming close to what earlier we have talked about as "significances." But to me they also bear witness to particular states of mind or being that we might recognize as capturing a particular age or stage. Such pairings as "unnoticed, blessed," seem to me pitch-perfect. Stafford also continues to play with the actor-role motif that has accompanied so many of these meditations on the developmental journey.
School Play
You were a princess, lost; I
was a little bird. Nobody cared
where we went or how we sang.
A storm, I seem to remember, a giant
wave, some kind of crash at the end.
I think we cried when they took off our wings.
If time should happen again—and it could;
we're still in a play, you know—maybe
we'll hide so well the wave will pass
and after the storm we'll come out. We both
will really believe what, even then, we knew;
not the princess, not the bird—but the song—
was true.[8]
First Grade
In the play Amy didn't want to be
anybody; so she managed the curtain.
Sharon wanted to be Amy. But Sam
wouldn't let anybody be anybody else—
he said it was wrong. "All right," Steve said,
"I'll be me, but I don't like it."
So Amy was Amy, and we didn't have the play.
And Sharon cried.[9]
Young
Before time had a name, when win
or lose were the same, in a forsaken
town I lived unnoticed, blessed.
Remember when shadows played
because there were leaves in the wind?
And people came to our door from a land
where stories were real?
Barefoot, we traveled the roads
all summer. At night we drew pictures
of home with smoke from the chimney.
And we frowned when we read,
so we could understand.
After the years came true, but before
their cost, I played in that big world, too,
and often won: this face was known;
gold came into these hands.
But unwieldy hours overwhelmed
my time. All I intended blew away.
The best of my roads went wrong,
no matter my age, no matter
how long I tried.
It was far, it was dim,
toward the last. And nobody knew how
heavy it was by the end,
for that same being who lived back then.
Don't you see how it was, for a child?
Don't you understand?[10]
The first of the three captures my memory of my daughter at four, the crying as the wings are removed. The second speaks so to the differentiation of personalities and the first social entanglements and misunderstandings of first graders that my wife, a 13-year veteran of daily life with six and seven year olds, is always telling me about over dinner.
The last ends heart-wrenchingly with a plea to the adult self to have mercy on the buried child within and the helpless child without. There are always these moments in teaching when my callous obduracy gives way and I see the child before me and my heart is "strangely warmed."
Moving ever forward in time to the present day, here is another suite of poems that look at the processes of childhood and development and the constant revisions of memory, from Li-Young Lee.
A Hymn to Childhood
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder in the attic?
The one presided over by armed men
in ill-fitting uniforms
strolling the streets and alleys,
while loudspeakers declared a new era,
and the house around you grew bigger,
the rooms farther apart, with more and more
people missing?
The photographs whispered to each other
from their frames in the hallway.
The cooking pots said your name
each time you walked past the kitchen.
And you pretended to be dead with your sister
in games of rescue and abandonment.
You learned to lie still so long
the world seemed a play you viewed from the muffled
safety of a wing. Look! In
run the servants screaming, the soldiers shouting,
turning over the furniture,
smashing your mother’s china.
Don’t fall asleep.
Each act opens with your mother
reading a letter that makes her weep.
Each act closes with your father fallen
into the hands of Pharaoh.
Which childhood? The one that never ends? O you,
still a child, and slow to grow.
Still talking to God and thinking the snow
falling is the sound of God listening,
and winter is the high-ceilinged house
where God measures with one eye
an ocean wave in octaves and minutes,
and counts on many fingers
all the ways a child learns to say Me.
Which childhood?
The one from which you’ll never escape? You,
so slow to know
what you know and don’t know.
Still thinking you hear low song
in the wind in the eaves,
story in your breathing,
grief in the heard dove at evening,
and plentitude in the unseen bird
tolling at morning. Still slow to tell
memory from imagination, heaven
from here and now,
hell from here and now,
death from childhood, and both of them
from dreaming.[11]
Become Becoming
Wait for evening.
Then you’ll be alone.
Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:
The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.
And don’t forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out loud:
Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?
Wait for the sky’s last blue
(the color of your homesickness).
Then you’ll know the answer.
Wait for the air’s first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you’ll spy the wind’ barefoot steps.
Then you’ll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.
The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.
And the face behind the clock’s face
is not his father’s face.
And the hands behind the clock’s hands
are not his mother’s hands.
All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.
Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.
Then you’ll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.[12]
Nativity
In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.
How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night's darling?
Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,
this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,
just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,
each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.[13]
Finally (for now), this poem by Dorianne Laux brings me right into the physical environments of a sequence of ages. She recites the litany of my earliest sense impressions, carries me bodily from room to room and out the door, six months to three years to six to nine, until another consciousness forms within me, my own once-upon-a-time élan vital dancing a fierce dance in the face of dread. This is one of the qualities of the child that we sometimes pass over to dwell instead on innocence or joy or wonder. But there is great value in remembering and giving honor to this fierceness, the raging against the dying of the light, the stubborn refusal to learn adult acquiescence.
WHEN I WAS BORN
the world was filled with fat hands,
pillows, my own earlobes. Too full
to eat, I grabbed at feet, pink toes
sucked into a single idea, blue milk,
gutters on plastic bibs, the bars
of light banging into my crib.
One day there was a new bed,
the wholeness of a room saved
in square chunks like an old puzzle.
I was closer to the floor, farther
from the ceiling, and all the window
showed was sky. At night, sockets
hissed, the moon lit my hot body
turning between cool white sheets.
The world began to make patterns,
designs, dishes stacked by size, cars
in the driveway. Down for Off. Up
for On. Socks and underwear in the top
drawer. It all made sense, rabbits
in holes, fences erect, then the wind
came unpinned, began whipping the dust.
I crawled under a bush, found a lizard
crushed, eyes spit out on either side
and twitching in the dirt, the tail
still alive. All the walk home I watched
the sky, waited for the world to take me
by surprise, reach up and twist its arms
around my chest, squeeze out my eyes.
But what I saw was a bluejay lift
from a wire, her body hovering on
nothing but air, and fling one strong note
as she stretched her wings to disappear
in the arms of a tree. For years that day
followed me, went to school in my lunchbag,
flattened itself into my books, screeched
green chalkboards with heat-white claws,
crawled under bathroom doors.
And when it wouldn't let go, I kicked
the boys on the stairs, spit in gutters
and stepped on cracks, ran home
to my room, stripped to my socks, turned
up the radio, shut out the sky.
Then, spreading my arms, I closed my eyes
and taught myself to dance.[14]
May the Dance of the Lord of the Dance be with you!
[1] From: http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2008/08/ages-of-man.html
[2] A great online resource for more of these "Ages of Man" developmental schemata is found here, an op-ed piece in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/08/opinion/20091019_opart.html
[3] Found here: http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/asu_2_7.html
[4] from: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172958
Source: The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet (J.R. McElrath, Ed., 1981).
[5] Again, once I have found where it is cited in Montessori's work, I will amend this footnote.
[6] Perkins, David, Ed., English Romantic Writers. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1967. pp. 279-282.
[7] Snow, Edward, Translator and Editor. The Poetry of Rilke. New York: North Point Press, 2009. p. 567.
[8] Stafford, William. The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. St. Paul, MN: Gray Wolf Press, 1998. p. 216.
[9] Ibid., p. 209.
[10] Ibid., p. 249.
[11] Lee, Li-Young . Behind My Eyes. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. pp. 25-27.
[12] Ibid., pp. 21-22.
[13] Lee, Li-Young . Book of My Nights. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. pp. 9-10.
[14] Laux, Dorianne. Awake. Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1990. pp. 33-34.
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