Neverending Top Ten #5.6 – A Child Of Air

I heard Robert Louis Stephenson’s poem To Any Reader on the radio earlier this week. It’s a poem I think I originally encountered at University, when its meaning rather passed me by. Many years later, it hit me like a truck. I was in tears by the end of the recitation and I’ve cried a few more times since, on reading it… or even just thinking about it.

Being an English teacher, I’ve investigated a few online interpretations, but I’m not sure any of them really get the full force of the poem as I understand it. But that’s the thing with poetry: like a well written song, its ultimate meaning belongs to the listener (or reader).

TO ANY READER

As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far ways,
And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

What gets me is that the poem is not just about the impermanence of youth. As a parent, the idea that Sam won’t always be my little boy playing football out in the garden is a huge enough one to cope with. But the poem doesn’t start with him. Through the use of the second person, it begins in my own childhood, with my mother watching me play. Therefore it’s a poem about me growing up, my mum growing old, and my son doing both, all in one. Three generations aging, losing the happy, innocent images of their youth, and only having ghostly memories to fall back on. When you interpret it that way, I think it must be one of the most quietly devastating poems ever written.

I don't have anything to match that musically, and I'm not even going to try. Instead, here's a song about not having enough money to go down the pub, but going anyway. Bag of Cans are from Norwich, like The Quiz Of The Week...