Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Teacher’s told me what you are.
Even babies won’t wonder very soon. That is to say, they won’t wonder out loud. Nobody does. Another of my poems was:
Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here.
I thought of it the other day when I stepped into the library with the list of books I had to have an opinion about before Mrs. W——‘s Thursday Afternoon, I felt like a literary infant.
Where did you come from, baby fair?
Out of the here into everywhere.
And the bookcases stared at me.
It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fashioned breathing spell he used to have after getting here—whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year—new-comers to this planet—who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. It will be: