The Romantics and the Wonder of Childhood

A central theme of Romanticism is childhood innocence and wonder, and the importance of retaining that perspective throughout life.

William Wordsworth

According to Harold Bloom, childhood represents a kind of lost paradise to Wordsworth, which he seeks to recapture in his poetry.

"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

Wordsworth writes about his loss of the wonder and connectedness that he experienced as a child, and the way in which that affected his ability to connect with the natural world as an adult.

Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

Wordsworth implies that although he can never fully recapture that child-like sense of wonder, he can still find strength and meaning in the world around him.

"We Are Seven" — Wordsworth reflects on a conversation he had with a young girl who insists that she and her siblings are still "seven" in spite of the fact that two of her siblings have died.

Caspar David Friedrich - Eule am Grabe 1837

"A simple child,

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?"

Wordsworth's belief in the resilience of childhood innocence and wonder—and the importance of preserving these qualities into adulthood—comes through loud and clear.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"To a Skylark" —a tribute to the freedom and imagination of childhood, that compares the skylark's song to the pure and unbounded creativity of the child's mind:

Marc Chagall The Poet with the Birds, 1911

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now."

Shelley celebrates the unfettered joy and creativity of the child's mind, and believes that this is something that adults should strive to recapture in their own lives.

William Blake

"The Chimney Sweeper" — Blake uses the figure of the child to symbolize the innocence and vulnerability of humanity in the face of a cruel and unjust society.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,

Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Frost at Midnight" is a meditation on Coleridge's own childhood memories, and the way in which they were shaped by his experience of nature. Coleridge describes his childhood as a time of "unremembered pleasure" and "wild ecstasies," and suggests that his deep connection with nature was a key factor in shaping his imagination and sense of wonder:

Marc Chagall

"Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!"

Coleridge, like the other Romantics, celebrates the innocence and purity of childhood, and suggests that it is intimately connected to the natural world.

For the Romantics, childhood wasn’t just a phase—it was a state of wonder and openness to the world that adults spend their lives trying to hold onto. Perhaps the most important thing we can do is refuse to let that sense of awe slip away.