Magical Poems about Growing Up

Magical Poems About Growing Up and Growing Older.

Growing up is that one bit that doesn’t ever change in our lives.

When we’re five, we’re scared of growing up. When we’re fifty, we’re scared of growing old. Somewhere along, the feeling gets lost in the haze of it, actually.

You forget that it is happening, you bury it under the daily routine of work, exams, jobs, vacations, doing dishes at 10 P.M. after dinner. You change, you improve, you mature as a person and you don’t even realize it. Until one day, sometime in the unlimited present, it sneaks up on you, this constant movement.

You read something, find a box of memories while cleaning the cupboards, or maybe just do that little trick with the frying pan your father does sometimes when he cooks, and it crashes into you, this growth. It takes you by surprise, grabs you by the chin and forces you to look. See, it says, look at how far you’ve come. Look at how mch farther you still have to go. Feel the inexpressible weight and the inexplicable joy of life.

Poems about Growing Up

Growing up is the little cloud on the horizon that floats lazily away, almost like it isn’t even moving, until you look back up and realize it gone. It is the most natural, the most confusing thing in the world. Here’s what it feels like on the days you find time enough to think and try to find the floating cloud.

“When you’re growing up, it takes a long time for you to realize that there’s something different about you. On one level, you know there’s something strange, but on another, yourself is the only thing you ever knew.”

― Brooke Stevens, The Circus of the Earth and the Air

I Remember, I Remember, by Thomas Hood

I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,—
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy.

Childish Griefs, by Emily Dickinson

Softened by Time's consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood's citadel
And undermined the years!

Bisected now by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhood's realm,
So easy to repair.

“We take it for granted that life moves forward. You build memories; you build momentum. You move as a rower moves: facing backwards. You can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going. And your boat is steered by a younger version of you. It’s hard not to wonder what life would be like facing the other way. Avenoir. You’d see your memories approaching for years, and watch as they slowly become real. You’d know which friendships will last, which days are important, and prepare for upcoming mistakes. You’d go to school, and learn to forget. One by one you’d patch things up with old friends, enjoying one last conversation before you meet and go your separate ways. And then your life would expand into epic drama. The colors would get sharper, the world would feel bigger. You’d become nothing other than yourself, reveling in your own weirdness. You’d fall out of old habits until you could picture yourself becoming almost anything. Your family would drift slowly together, finding each other again. You wouldn’t have to wonder how much time you had left with people, or how their lives would turn out. You’d know from the start which week was the happiest you’ll ever be, so you could relive it again and again. You’d remember what home feels like,and decide to move there for good. You’d grow smaller as the years pass, as if trying to give away everything you had before leaving. You’d try everything one last time, until it all felt new again. And then the world would finally earn your trust, until you’d think nothing of jumping freely into things, into the arms of other people. You’d start to notice that each summer feels longer than the last. Until you reach the long coasting retirement of childhood. You’d become generous, and give everything back. Pretty soon you’d run out of things to give, things to say, things to see. By then you’ll have found someone perfect; and she’ll become your world. And you will have left this world just as you found it. Nothing left to remember, nothing left to regret, with your whole life laid out in front of you, and your whole life left behind.”

― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The Return, by John Burroughs

He sought the old scenes with eager feet —
The scenes he had known as a boy;
"Oh, for a draught of those fountains sweet,
And a taste of that vanished joy!"

He roamed the fields, he wooed the streams,
His schoolboy paths essayed to trace;
The orchard ways recalled his dreams,
The hills were like his mother's face.

O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth!
In sorrow he learned this truth —
One may return to the place of his birth,
He cannot go back to his youth.

“When I was young, I used to wish I would fit in… I’m glad I didn’t get my wish.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

The Barefoot Boy, by John Greenleaf Whittier

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,—the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild-flower’s time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

The Toys, by Coventry Patmore

My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."

The Season of Youth, by William Knox

Rejoice, mortal man, in the noon of thy prime!
Ere thy brow shall be traced by the ploughshare of time,
Ere the twilight of age shall encompass thy way,
And thou droop’st, like the flowers, to thy rest in the clay.

Let the banquet be spread, let the wine-cup go round,
Let the joy-dance be wove, let the timbrels resound,
While the spring-tide of life in thy bosom is high,
And thy spirit is light as a lark in the sky.

Let the wife of thy love, like the sun of thy day,
Throw a radiance of joy o’er thy pilgrimage way —
Ere the shadows of grief come, like night, from the west,
And thou weep’st o’er the flower that expired on thy breast.

Rejoice, mortal man, in the noon of thy prime!
But muse on the power and the progress of time;
For thy life shall depart with the joy it hath given,
And a judgment of justice awaits thee in heaven.

“Don’t grow up too fast, Darling. Age is inevitable, but if you nurture a childlike heart, you’ll never, ever grow old.”

― Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt