A Poem for a Thursday #214

Frances Cornford was born on March 30, 1886 into the Darwin-Wedgewood family. She was privately educated and showed early talent as a writer. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1908. Cornford went on to publish several other volumes of poetry. She was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1959.

The spirits of children are remote and wise,
They must go free
Like fishes in the sea
Or starlings in the skies,
Whilst you remain
The shore where casually they come again.
But when there falls the stalking shade of fear,
You must be suddenly near,
You, the unstable, must become a tree
In whose unending heights of flowering green
Hangs every fruit that grows, with silver bells;
Though still you should possess
Roots that go deep in ordinary earth,
And strong consoling bark 
To love and to caress.
Last, when at dark
Safe on the pillow lies an up-gazing head
And drinking holy eyes
Are fixed on you,
When, from behind them, questions come to birth
Insistently,
On all the things that you have ever said
Of suns and snakes and parellelograms and flies,
And whether these are true,
Then for a while you'll need to be no more
That sheltering shore
Or legendary tree in safety spread,
No, then you must put on 
The robes of Solomon,
Or simply be
Sir Isaac Newton sitting on the bed.

Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents
Frances Cornford

Brona at Brona's Books shared a poem this week.