Lyric Poem · Nature

Children

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Reading room

1Come to me, O ye children!

2For I hear you at your play,

3And the questions that perplexed me

4Have vanished quite away.

5Ye open the eastern windows,

6That look towards the sun,

7Where thoughts are singing swallows

8And the brooks of morning run.

9In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,

10In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,

11But in mine is the wind of Autumn

12And the first fall of the snow.

13Ah! what would the world be to us

14If the children were no more?

15We should dread the desert behind us

16Worse than the dark before.

17What the leaves are to the forest,

18With light and air for food,

19Ere their sweet and tender juices

20Have been hardened into wood, —

21That to the world are children;

22Through them it feels the glow

23Of a brighter and sunnier climate

24Than reaches the trunks below.

25Come to me, O ye children!

26And whisper in my ear

27What the birds and the winds are singing

28In your sunny atmosphere.

29For what are all our contrivings,

30And the wisdom of our books,

31When compared with your caresses,

32And the gladness of your looks?

33Ye are better than all the ballads

34That ever were sung or said;

35For ye are living poems,

36And all the rest are dead.

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“Children” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — quilloak.com/poems/children

Quick facts

Poem: Children
Poet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Length: 36 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Nature, Childhood, Winter

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 36 lines · 9 quatrains
Line length: Lines run 6-9 syllables (median 7). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
Refrain: “Come to me, O ye children!”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Author record: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882
Source record: PoetryDBChildren by henry-wadsworth-longfellow, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 53499b0105aacebd…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Nature Childhood Winter

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