While they are at your side, love these little ones to the utmost.
Forget yourself. Serve them; care for them; lavish all your tenderness on them.
Value your good fortune while it is with you, and let nothing of the sweetness of their babyhood go unprized. Not for long will you keep the happiness that now lies within your reach.
You will not always walk in the sunshine with a little warm, soft hand nestling in each of yours, nor hear little feet pattering beside you, and eager baby voices questioning and prattling of a thousand things with ceaseless excitement.
Not always will you see that trusting face upturned to yours, feel those little arms about your neck, and those tender lips pressed upon your cheek, nor will you have that tiny form to kneel beside you, and murmur baby prayers into your ear.
Love them, and win their love, and shower on them all the treasures of your heart. Fill up their days with happiness, and share with them their mirth and innocent delights. Childhood is but for a day. Ere you are aware it will be gone with all its gifts forever.
George Townshend
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Related articles
- Summary of the poem childhood by markus natten (wiki.answers.com)
- Tell Us About Your Childhood In Our Millennial Survey [Surveys] (jezebel.com)
- Ever Have a Joyous, Childhood Feeling of Expectancy? (psychcentral.com)
- http://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/theres-a-hole-in-my-sidewalk/
- http://soulparenting.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/the-parent-as-miner/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Townshend_(Bah%C3%A1’%C3%AD)
- http://creativeconflictwisdom.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/anna-akhmatova-poet-of-stalins-terror/
I love this poem. But I also love Roger McGough’s poem Pay-Back Time, and smile over it from time to time as an antidote to being too sentimental. I hope you don’t mind that I’m posting it as a comment:
PAY-BACK TIME
O Lord, let me be a burden on my children
For long they’ve been a burden upon me.
May they fetch and carry, clean and scrub
And do so cheerfully.
Let them take it in turns at putting me up
Nice sunny rooms at the top of the stairs
With a walk-in bath and lift installed
At great expense…..Theirs.
Insurance against the body-blows of time
Isn’t that what having children’s all about?
To bring them up knowing that they owe you
And can’t contract out?
What is money for but to spend on their schooling?
Designer clothes, mindless hobbies, usual stuff.
Then as soon as they’re earning, off they go
Well, enough’s enough.
It’s been a blessing watching them develop
The parental pride we felt as each one grew.
But Lord, let me be a burden on my children
And on my children’s children too. Roger McGough
Fantastic, Ann! Thanks!
Childhood is fleeting, indeed . . . but our inner child resides within forever. 😀
That is true, Nancy and also we encounter children in that precious fleeting period all the time in our lives and if we are cognizant of how important it is as a period, we may interact differently even with the children of strangers – or at least that’s how it suggests itself to me! Thanks – as always.