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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CHILDREN, by REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN Poet's Biography
First Line: They come, and take, unrecking, all you give
Last Line: And, oh, they go to give what you have given!
Subject(s): Children; Childhood
First Line: They come, and take, unrecking, all you give
Last Line: And, oh, they go to give what you have given!
Subject(s): Children; Childhood
They come, and take, unrecking, all you give:
The mother's pains, the father's patient toil,
The love, the fears, dreams' death that they may live,
The daylong care, the weary midnight's spoil.
Now helpless beauty in your anxious arms;
Then peril-potent grown a maid or lad;
Next, while you still endure the first alarms,
They go unguessing, grown -- with all you had.
You storm mute Heaven, demanding of it why,
Except for memories, your earth is lost:
God's good is never cheap, the price is high --
And yet what child has undeserved its cost?
For what you did is all this that they do,
And what they rend is what yourself have riven:
They came to be exactly what were you,
And, oh, they go to give what you have given!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
THE THREE CHILDREN by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN
CHILDREN SELECTING BOOKS IN A LIBRARY by RANDALL JARRELL
COME TO THE STONE ... by RANDALL JARRELL
THE LOST WORLD by RANDALL JARRELL
A SICK CHILD by RANDALL JARRELL
CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS
ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS IN CHILDHOOD by DONALD JUSTICE
THE POET AT SEVEN by DONALD JUSTICE