I wrote this poem for my Write for Fun Class from Bravewriter about this painting above, Celebration with Fireworks and Kites by Chinese School.
I had to try to just use the words I had been collecting that week.
cheerful China
colorful fun
thoughts of laughter
wild shimmer
conspicuous designs
delicate kites
unabashed learning
BY SARA TEASDALE
They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before, —
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.
What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? Today and tomorrow.
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? The ocean and truth.
–by Christina G. Rossetti
(photo at Marin Headlands, CA)
by Walter de la Mare
I heard a little child beneath the stars
Talk as he ran along
To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed
A-tiptoe into song.
In his dark eyes lay a wild universe,–
Wild forests, peaks, and crests;
Angels and fairies, giants, wolves and he
Were that world’s only guests.
Elsewhere was home and mother, his warm bed:–
Now, only God alone
Could, armed with all His power and wisdom, make
Earths richer than his own.
O Man! — thy dreams, thy passions, hopes, desires!–
He in his pity keep
A homely bed where love may lull a child’s
Fond Universe asleep!
by Walter de la Mare
Behind the blinds I sit and watch
The people passing – passing by;
And not a single one can see
My tiny watching eye.
They cannot see my little room,
All yellowed with the shaded sun;
They do not even know I’m here;
Nor’ll guess when I am gone.
by A.A. Milne
Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where i sit.
there isn’t any
other stair
quite like it.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
so this is the stair
where
I always
stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And it isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!
by Robert Louis Stevenson
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside –
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown –
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down
by A.A. Milne
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
-from Now We Are Six
by Robert Louis Stevenson
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
Jadyn Dalrymple 