Childhood - Frances Cornford

rances Cornford
Childhood
Frances Cornford, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, was born in Cambridge, England, in 1886, where she also died, in 1960. She was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry in 1959.
‘Childhood’ explores a dual perspective on the ageing process. On the one hand, it is a child who watches ‘through the banisters’ and is ‘helplessly young’, but the whole poem is a memory – ‘I used to think’. Between the lines, the reader understands that the crafting narrator is moving towards old age. Both young and old are ‘helpless’ in the progression of time.
These wider considerations are based on precise, particular memories and observations. The first section vividly describes the physical features of old age, while the second centres around the moment of realisation about ‘My great-aunt Etty’s friend’ and her rolling beads from a broken necklace.
Though written in one stanza, consider the effects of Cornford’s use of short lines. The first serves to complete the childish observation before the epiphany in the poem’s second section, while the final short line provides the ambivalent conclusion. Note the way too that the couplets, established in the early part of the poem, break up in the last four lines.
Compare with
My Parents Stephen Spender
For Heidi With Blue Hair Fleur Adcock
Praise Song for My Mother Grace Nichols
Follower Seamus Heaney
Country School Allen Curnow
A Quoi Bon Dire Charlotte Mew
Songs of Ourselves: Section 5: Notes 3
ANALYSIS OF "Childhood" by Frances Cornford 1. I used to think that grown-up people chose 2. To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose, 3. And veins like small fat snakes on either hand, 4. On purpose to be grand. 5. Till through the banister I watched one day 6. My great-aunt Etty's friend who was going away, 7. And how her onyx beads had come unstrung. 8. I saw her grope to find them as they rolled; 9. And then I knew that she was helplessly old, 10. As I was helplessly young. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. Analysis
The speaker of this poem is looking back on an occasion in her life when she first realized that both young and old people are helpless against the aging process. In lines 1-4, she tells us that she used to think grown-ups "chose" those physical defects that marked them as old, but the speaker also thought they chose them "to be grand." This thought indicates that the speaker was very young, since she thought stiff backs, wrinkles, and veined hands were "grand." (I secretly wish the poet had chosen a different word from "grand," one that truly reflected her meaning; I suspect she settled on grand to rime with hand.)
The lines 6-10 contain the reason for the speaker's changed opinion about aging grown-ups. She had told us that she used to believe that the grown-ups "chose" those aging qualities until she observed her great-aunt's friend groping helplessly for her beads. The speaker realizes that it is not likely a person would choose to have such difficulty just retrieving some loose beads, so she then realizes that they probably don't choose those visible physical defects either. This observation led the speaker to change her perspective: the adults were just helpless as they acquired those old-age characteristics, and their helplessness paralleled her own, the helplessness of being young.
The rime scheme in this poem is AA, BB, CC, DE, ED. An interesting rime scheme, but as I mentioned earlier, I believe the rime scheme interferes with meaning. Take "wrinkles round their nose," for example; wrinkles usually form around the eyes and mouth. Even in a very old person, wrinkles are seldom noticeable around the nose. In line six the friend "is going away"; while "away" provides a nice rime with "day," it is vague. Perhaps the speaker wants us to infer that the friend was dying, but "going away" does not clearly convey that message.
"Childhood" is still an interesting poem, allowing us one speaker's observation about how a young person relates to the aging process.
I'm in the pro-Cornford camp. I think that there is an over-emphasis on this triolet, which is not one of her better poems, I feel.

What she did as a middle-class woman of her time (she was the granddaughter of Darwin, and a descendant of Wordsworth), was just as Housman used a simple idiom to say profound things. I think it was also difficult for Cornford, as she was expected to write as women of her position were at that time - just as Housman could not admit to being gay, I get the impression her family and friends were of the opinion that she should stick to 'trivial matters' rather than take on the metaphysical or political.

Sometimes though, reading her work, I'm reminded of Elaine Showalter's famous quote that 'the personal is the political', and that she is able to use the traditional tropes in her favour, to ultimately subvert them.

I am delighted with her later work especially, and find it not only formally intriguing and a delight to read, but also something that has a lot to say.

ove this poem because of its simplicity of expression. The narrative point of view is that of a child who grows up in an instant of realisation

indeed with you, simple but with many way to understand it context, I like when someone can say many thing in just few words, is sad when someome need to be hear to express their feelings, there no need to scream or place the attention of the world over you to be heared, just a few but good words.
In both of these poems you get to experience adults through the eyes of a child, in the first the child discovers a friend of an aunt who is old, and that the child realizes she is very young. The poem tells of aging and the child wonders why anyone would want to grow old with stiff backs and wrinkles, and veins in their hands. his is a 20th century poem about a little girl watching a grand old lady struggle to pick up a broken string of pearls and realising that they are both helpless in their own ages. Very moving and effective.

Fragility of human life, relationships and isolation and duty

The link between childhood and old age, the full circle of life in which at the first and last stages we are helpless - back to square one: Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Is our life marked out? Do we merely go through the stages of our life acting it out? Are there really seven stages?

We will never cease exploring and the end of our exploring will be to arrive at the place we began and know it for the first time." Although I think Eliot was speaking of this as a transcendant spritual experience and here