Childhood
Introduction
"Childhood" is a lyric poem by Markus Natten, a young poet who reflects on the moment his childhood ended and adulthood began. The poem consists of four stanzas, each asking "When did my childhood go?" and offering a different answer. It is a meditation on the loss of innocence, the growth of critical thinking, and the painful awareness that comes with maturity.
Key Concepts and Definitions
- Loss of Innocence: The central theme — childhood's end is marked by the realisation that the world is more complex and often more dishonest than a child believes.
- Critical Thinking / Rationalism: The speaker first loses childhood when he realises that Heaven and Hell may not exist as literal geographic places; reason replaces blind faith.
- Hypocrisy of Adults: The second stanza marks the loss of childhood when the speaker notices that adults say one thing and do another — preaching love but not practising it.
- Individuality: The third stanza identifies the moment the speaker discovered he had "a mind of his own" — independent thought marks the boundary between childhood and adulthood.
- Nostalgia: The final stanza is wistful; childhood has retreated into the faces of babies and into "an infant's face" — the only place innocence is still visible.
- Rhetorical Question: The repeated "When did my childhood go?" is a rhetorical device that structures the poem and invites introspection.
Example 1: Stanza 1 — Loss of Religious Certainty
The speaker realises that the Heaven and Hell described in religious teaching are not to be found on any map. The moment reason displaces unquestioning faith, childhood ends. This is the intellectual threshold: a child accepts what is told; an adult demands evidence.
Example 2: Stanza 2 — Discovery of Adult Hypocrisy
The speaker watches adults who "talked of love" but "did not act so lovingly." This gap between word and deed shatters the child's trust. The childhood belief that grown-ups are perfectly good and wise is broken. Disillusionment marks this second threshold.
Example 3: Stanza 3 — Discovery of Individual Identity
The speaker discovers that he has "a mind of his own" — he can form opinions, disagree, and think independently. This is the psychological threshold: childhood involves mirroring others' views; adulthood involves forming one's own. The discovery is both liberating and isolating.
Example 4: The Repeated Refrain
Each stanza begins with "When did my childhood go?" and ends with "Was that the day?" This parallel structure (anaphora and epistrophe) creates a mournful, searching rhythm — like someone trying to pinpoint an exact moment that cannot actually be fixed.
Example 5: "Was it the day I ceased to be undecided / But was it, was it, was it?"
The tentative language ("was it, was it") suggests the speaker cannot be certain which moment defined the transition. Growing up is gradual, not sudden — the poem captures this ambiguity.
Example 6: The Final Stanza — Where Does Childhood Go?
The speaker concludes that childhood has gone to "some forgotten place / That's hidden in an infant's face." Childhood is not truly lost; it survives in the very young and in memory. The tone shifts from interrogative to elegiac (mourning with acceptance).
Example 7: Imagery and Tone
The poem's imagery is simple and domestic, which suits a memory of early life. The tone moves from curious and questioning (stanzas 1-3) to nostalgic and tender (stanza 4). There are no violent images — loss of childhood in this poem is quiet, gradual, and inevitable.
Common mistakes
- Students sometimes say the poem is about "growing up happily." In fact, the dominant mood is loss and nostalgia, not celebration.
- The poem has four stanzas of four lines each (quatrains) — do not confuse stanza count with line count.
- The ending line "an infant's face" does NOT mean the speaker became a child again; it means innocence survives only in the very young.
Summary
"Childhood" traces the speaker's gradual awareness that innocence has been replaced by reason, disillusionment, and independence. Three thresholds mark the journey: loss of literal religious belief, discovery of adult hypocrisy, and the emergence of individual thought. The poem closes with tender nostalgia — childhood retreats into the faces of infants, preserved but unreachable.