Poems for New Parents

By Becky Brown

A beautiful gift anthology of classic poetry which captures the excitement and joy of a new arrival in the family.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning pocket-sized classics with ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited by Becky Brown.

There are poems which celebrate the anticipation of the happy event and the outburst of joy and hope which it brings. There are gorgeous lullabies and rhymes to read aloud as well as wise words of encouragement and advice. Poems for New Parents also looks forward to a child’s own discoveries and flourishing imagination. In this perfect present for new parents, you’ll find poetry that’s inspiring and poignant, sometimes funny and sometimes reflective, from a wealth of famous poets such as William Wordsworth, Lewis Carroll and Mary Coleridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781529065411

Book preview

Introduction

Becky Brown

There are few things more exhilarating, intimidating, joyful and strange than bringing a new person into the world. For first-time parents, it is an experience defined by learning, whether through the advice and guidance of those who’ve done it all before – family and friends, midwives and doctors – or by the terrifying and beautiful process of experience, of trial, error and age-old instinct. ‘Love set you going like a fat gold watch,’ says Sylvia Plath of her newly minted baby in ‘Morning Song’; crystallizing a parental love that seems part biology, part emotional inheritance, simultaneously new and yet deeply old.

While much about childbirth and parenting has changed dramatically across the centuries, this timeless love is a visible thread throughout our literature. Poems for New Parents collects together verse and prose that captures the sublime joy (and sometimes fear) that accompanies new life. From the realities of sleeplessness, anxiety and responsibility to the thrill of watching a brand-new human grow, change and explore.

The verse in these pages ranges from anonymously penned rhymes and lullabies – words so recognizable they could almost be thought to run in our blood – to lines written by our most beloved authors and poets. They might be named Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth or William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti or Edith Nesbit, but they are also fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts – and their love shines through. So, too, are the poems which span the globe, from the cradle songs of the First Nations people of North America, to verse from India, the Middle East and the Antipodes.

They are arranged into six sections. Firstly, ‘The Birthnight’, for the very beginning, the unforgettable moment of arrival when everything changes. Then ‘Infant Joy’, for the sensation of overwhelming parental love, whether an immediate rush or slow burn, for fascination – or even infatuation – with the sheer smallness and wholeness of this tiny person. Next, ‘A Cradle Song’, for the precious necessity of sleep, filled with lullabies and soft, soporific verse. Then ‘Mother to Son’, for wisdom and advice, meditations on parenthood and the connection between parent and child. Followed by ‘There was a Child went Forth’, for the beauty and whimsy of a baby opening their eyes to and exploring the world – of their purity of imagination and their joy in little things. And, finally, ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’, for delightful, magical nonsense and nursery rhyme, the very first poetry you’ll share with your baby.

In the rollercoaster of the early months, these poems offer windows of pause, a chance to cherish and to savour the experiences of new parenthood. Whether you read them alone or with your baby, they encapsulate those fleeting moments and feelings, so precious as time hurtles forwards. And later, they are words to return to, to help remember that special time. In the words of the poet Mary Lamb:

Thou struggler into loving arms,

Young climber up of knees!

When I forget thy thousand ways,

Then life and all shall cease.

THE BIRTHNIGHT

The Birthnight: To F.

Dearest, it was a night

That in its darkness rocked Orion’s stars;

A sighing wind ran faintly white

Along the willows, and the cedar boughs

Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across

The starry silence of their antique moss:

No sound save rushing air

Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,

And in thy mother’s arms, couched weeping there,

Thou, lovely thing.

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956)

from To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible

For thee the nurse prepares her lulling songs,

The eager matrons count the lingering day;

But far the most thy anxious parent longs

On thy soft cheek a mother’s kiss to lay.

She only asks to lay her burden down,

That her glad arms that burden may resume;

And nature’s sharpest pangs her wishes crown,

That free thee living from thy living tomb.

She longs to fold to her maternal breast

Part of herself, yet to herself unknown;

To see and to salute the stranger guest,

Fed with her life through many a tedious moon.

Come, reap thy rich inheritance of love!

Bask in the fondness of a Mother’s eye!

Nor wit nor eloquence her heart shall move

Like the first accents of thy feeble cry.

Haste, little captive, burst thy prison doors!

Launch on the living world, and spring to light!

Nature for thee displays her various stores,

Opens her thousand inlets of delight.

If charmèd verse or muttered prayers had power

With favouring spells to speed thee on thy way,

Anxious I’d bid my beads each passing hour,

Till thy wished smile thy mother’s pangs o’erpay.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825)

Étude Realiste

I.

A baby’s feet, like sea-shells pink,

Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,

An angel’s lips to kiss, we think,

A baby’s feet.

Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat

They stretch and spread and wink

Their ten soft buds that part and meet.

No flower-bells that expand and shrink

Gleam half so heavenly sweet,

As shine on life’s untrodden brink,

A baby’s feet.

II.

A baby’s hands, like rose-buds furled

Where yet no leaf expands,

Ope if you touch, though close up-curled,

A baby’s hands.

Then, fast as warriors grip their brands

When battle’s bolt is hurled,

They close, clenched hard like tightening bands.

No rose-buds yet by dawn impearled

Match, even in loveliest lands,

The sweetest flowers in all the world—

A baby’s hands.

III.

A baby’s eyes, ere speech begin,

Ere lips learn words or sighs,

Bless all things bright enough to win

A baby’s eyes.

Love, while the sweet thing laughs and lies,

And sleep flows out and in,

Sees perfect in them Paradise!

Their glance might cast out pain and sin,

Their speech make dumb the wise,

By mute glad godhead felt within

A baby’s eyes.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)

from Anne of Green Gables

‘They went to live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlour window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn’t you? I’m glad she was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to