Best Children Poems

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
...

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
...

When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.
...

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of Children.'

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
...

WE who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
...

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers---
And that cannot stop their tears.
...

From Child's Garden of Verses

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
...

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
...

Part One


The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry.
...

...

She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt
Someone she loved once passed by – too late
...

I didn't go to church today,
I trust the Lord to understand.
The surf was swirling blue and white,
The children swirling on the sand.
...

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --
Children three that nestle near,
...

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
...

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
...

In their faces a colourless gaping of life's adversity:
the hopeless grief of a hellish existence;
Malnourished, starving, filth and olfactory horrors;  
Their humiliating nothingness clothed in rags;
...

CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems
Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams,
Or carnival of careless joys that leap
About your hearts like billows on the deep
...

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;
...

When voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still
...

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --

...

Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
...

listen children
keep this in the place
you have for keeping
always
...

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
...

Christmas is really
for the children.
Especially for children
who like animals, stables,
...

Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle;
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.
...

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so:
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 'tis their nature, too.
...

All alone, a snowman stands, staring out at the world.
What a life!
Short, cold, freezing really,
rigidly waiting for the 'melting' feeling to arrive.
...

Rain bashing, rain crashing,
In the puddles, children splashing,
Mother's tongue has started lashing,
Everyone is wet!
...

The sunshine seeks my little room
To tell me Paris streets are gay;
That children cry the lily bloom
All up and down the leafy way;
...

Two good little children, named Mary and Ann,
Both happily live, as good girls always can;
And though they are not either sullen or mute,
They seldom or never are heard to dispute.
...

When I am alone I am happy.
The air is cool. The sky is
flecked and splashed and wound
with color. The crimson phalloi
...

...

Dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold,
But the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm;
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in Heaven will never do well.
...

I am the pillars of the house;
The keystone of the arch am I.
Take me away, and roof and wall
Would fall to ruin me utterly.
...

When I think of the many people
who privately despise children,
I can't say I'm completely shocked,
...

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
...

Televised news turns
a half-used day into
a waste of desolation.
If nothing wondrous preceded
the catastrophic announcements,
...

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
...

.
Our beautiful children are dying
In Africa, Europe, the Middle East
Asia, the Americas,
...

Part One


As night fell and the light glittered in the great house, the servants stood at the massive door awaiting the coming of the guests; and upon their velvet garments shown golden buttons.
...

In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
...

God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.
...

"Houses"—so the Wise Men tell me—
"Mansions"! Mansions must be warm!
Mansions cannot let the tears in,
Mansions must exclude the storm!
...

'Oh, Jesus, ” I am at your door steps and accept my prayers “small girl lit candles in the church and just cried while looking at the cross of lord.” How much you have suffered for mankind” she murmured and stared at the glittering eyes of Christ. She was at the highest peak of happiness and knell down to have more blessings from Him.

The little child never knew what was in store for her. A little noise from near by just detracted her attention from Christ and she found some one was pouring kerosene on her head. She was completely shocked and soon found to be wet in kerosene. She only saw flash from match stick and found burring in flames. She found Christ just extending his hand. Soon she was in flames and crashing on the ground.” help, help' came the groaning voice from little child and all the children from orphanage made a frantic cry for help. The child was rushed to hospital with unconscious state of mind with no hope of survival.
...

What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
...

A Mother's Love

Nowhere will i find a love like a mother's love
Who did her best, to look her best
...

A photograph appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1994...a malnourished dying child trying to crawl to a UN aid post a kilometer away...watched over by a vulture just waiting for the child to die...


Kevin Carter zoomed his camera lens, that day in’94,
...

It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling
Jingling... Beneath the fiery gulmohur, with
...

We must suffer, husband and father, we must suffer, daughter and son,
For the wrong we have taken part in and the wrong that we have seen done.
Let the bride of frivolous fashion, and of ease, be ashamed and dumb,
For I tell you the nations shall rule us who have let their children come!
...

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead
and the restless water is boisterous.
On the seashore of endless worlds
...

BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,
our children no longer give us honor.

BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared
...

When colour goes home into the eyes,
And lights that shine are shut again
With dancing girls and sweet birds’ cries
Behind the gateways of the brain;
...

Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth,
flat on my drainboard, dead asleep,
its suit of mail proof only against the stream?
What is it to live in a stream,
...

Hold hard, these ancient minutes in the cuckoo's month,
Under the lank, fourth folly on Glamorgan's hill,
As the green blooms ride upward, to the drive of time;
Time, in a folly's rider, like a county man
...

...

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.
...

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
...

Come up here, O dusty feet!
Here is fairy ready to eat.
Here in my retiring room,
Children ,you may dine
...

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July
...

Twisting back to time old memory we see,
Love builds heaven at home love is the key.

Sea of emotion floats in waves of joy light,
...

Weary not of us, for we are very beautiful; it is out of very jealousy and proper pride that we entered the veil.
On the day when we cast of the body’s veil from the soul, you will see that we are the envy of despair of man and the Polestars.
Wash your face and become clean for beholding us, else remain afar, for we are beloveds of ourselves.
We are not that beauty who tomorrow will become a crone; till eternity we are young and heart-comforting and fair of stature.
...

I come and stand at every door
But none can hear my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead for I am dead
...

The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.
...

Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light -- with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its blue flood -- the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it -- but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. -- Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.

Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world -- sunk in a deep grave -- waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes. -- The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence?
...

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
...

The young child, Christ, is straight and wise
And asks questions of the old men, questions
Found under running water for all children
And found under shadows thrown on still waters
...

as thoughts flew round
like thistle downs in the air,
there shot from him a suppressed sigh.
...

CRAZED through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky;
Moon-struck by the despairing
Glances of her wandering eye
...

Butterfly in class
learns lessons along with kids.
Excellent student.
...

Each night before to bed,
A prayer to God she says
'Protect my children from
Troubles likely to face'
...

Children - are staring of eyes so frightful,
Mischievous legs on a wooden floor,
Children - is sun in the gloomy motives,
Hypotheses' of happy sciences world.
...

The sufferance of her race is shown,
And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;
Yet is she not at strife.
...

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
...

Hello, hello,
That's what we say,
When Christmas Eve comes on its way.
...

I spent yesterday weeping.
I have not cried very often in my life.
I did yesterday...
Watching our terrified children run from a school building that had been splattered with blood and fear and bodies- -
...

Children imitating cormorants
are even more wonderful
than cormorants.
...

Devastation wrought
In agonizing ill
Of God's omnipotence
..Or..Satan's will
...

Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.

We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
...

A touch of cold in the Autumn night --

I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
...

But where I found the children naughty,
In manners rude, in temper haughty,
Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,
Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,
...

Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
...

133

As Children bid the Guest "Good Night"
And then reluctant turn—
...

WHERE the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching--I pause aside with
them.
...

Jesus, He loves one and all,
Jesus, He loves children small,
Their souls are waiting round His feet
On high, before His mercy-seat.
...

Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather.
He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years.
He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered.
...

When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen.
When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.
...

HALF close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride;
They have spoken against you everywhere,
But weigh this song with the great and their pride;
...

OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
...

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
And nests among the trees;
The sailor sings of ropes and things
In ships upon the seas.
...

...

In this meadow starred with spring
Shepherds kneel before their king.
Mary throned, with dreaming eyes,
Gowned in blue like rain-washed skies,
...

What greater grief
Anguish and despair
Than loss of precious children?
...

...

The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
...

Shun the brush and shun the pen,
Shun the ways of clever men,
When they prove that black is white,
Whey they swear that wrong is right,
...

…And It Was Her Summer


“Go back to the children’s home, she said I have no work and
...

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.
Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,
Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,
...

(dedicated to Saint Cynosure, a poet friend at poemhunter)

Bread is dancing inside December
I think I know what I’m doing
...

The coroner's merry little children
Have such twinkling brown eyes.
Their father is not of gay men
And their mother jocular in no wise,
...

She's stopped in her southern tracks
Brought haply to this hard knock
When she shoots from the tall spruce
And snaps her neck on the glass.
...