David Bates

David Bates Poems

Childhood, sweet and sunny childhood,
With its careless, thoughtless air,
Like the verdant, tangled wildwood,
Wants the training hand of care.
...

Reproach will seldom mend the young,
If they are left to need it;
The breath of love must stir the tongue,
If you would have them heed it.
...

David Bates Biography

Born at Indian Hill, Ohio, March 6, 1809, David Bates was educated as a clerk in Buffalo and then in a mercantile house in Indianapolis, Indiana. Eventually he rose in the company to be a full member and its buyer, and he and his family settled in Philadelphia. He contributed as a man of letters to journals and published a volume of poetry, Eolian, in 1849. His son Stockton, who published his collected works after his father's death on January 25, 1870, wrote that "Two of his poems, `Speak Gently,' and `Childhood,' have attained a world-wide reputation; while the former of these, by translation into other languages, has become almost a universal hymn" (Poetical Works [Philadelphia, 1870]: vii). The former was made even more famous by Lewis Carroll's parody of it in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1866): 84-85 ... "Speak roughly to your little boy, / And beat him when he sneezes; / He only does it to annoy, / Because he knows it teases.")

The Best Poem Of David Bates

Childhood

Childhood, sweet and sunny childhood,
With its careless, thoughtless air,
Like the verdant, tangled wildwood,
Wants the training hand of care.

See it springing all around us --
Glad to know, and quick to learn;
Asking questions that confound us;
Teaching lessons in its turn.

Who loves not its joyous revel,
Leaping lightly on the lawn,
Up the knoll, along the level,
Free and graceful as a fawn?

Let it revel; it is nature
Giving to the little dears
Strength of limb, and healthful features,
For the toil of coming years.

He who checks a child with terror,
Stops its play, and stills its song,
Not alone commits an error,
But a great and moral wrong.

Give it play, and never fear it --
Active life is no defect;
Never, never break its spirit --
Curb it only to direct.

Would you dam the flowing river,
Thinking it would cease to flow?
Onward it must go forever --
Better teach it where to go.

Childhood is a fountain welling,
Trace its channel in the sand,
And its currents, spreading, swelling,
Will revive the withered land.

Childhood is the vernal season;
Trim and train the tender shoot;
Love is to the coming reason,
As the blossom to the fruit.

Tender twigs are bent and folded --
Art to nature beauty lends;
Childhood easily is moulded;
Manhood breaks, but seldom bends.

David Bates Comments

Joana g perez 22 June 2019

He read the speak gently

0 0 Reply
K.c. Ford 25 June 2015

He can't read your poems Soulful Heart. He's been dead for more than a century.

0 1 Reply
Soulful Heart 24 March 2012

As poet I felt I have to learn a lot with words...................hope u will give a few tips after u read my poems.............plzzzzzzzzzzzzz do read a few of mine.............will be glad to get your comments.

6 7 Reply

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