There are 467 Poems about Youth and Childhood

"Fire and Sleet and Candle-Light"
By Elinor Wylie

τεθνάκην δ’ ολίγω ’πιδεύης φαίνομ’ αλαία
By Allen Ginsberg

2212 West Flower Street
By Michael Collier

from Dante Études: Book Three: In My Youth Not Unstaind
By Robert Duncan

A Barefoot Boy
By James Whitcomb Riley

A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky
By Lewis Carroll

A Child's Christmas in Georgia, 1953
By Wyatt Prunty

A Country Boy in Winter
By Sarah Orne Jewett

A Girl on the Swing
By Chungmi Kim

A Happy Childhood
By William Matthews

A Hymn to Childhood
By Li-Young Lee

A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead
By Kenneth Koch

A New York Child’s Garden of Verses
By Franklin Pierce Adams

A Note Left in Jimmy Leonard’s Shack
By James Wright

A Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar
By Robert Duncan

A Poem for Children with Thoughts on Death
By Jupiter Hammon

A Reverie
By Joanna Baillie

A Shropshire Lad II: Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
By A. E. Housman

A Sister on the Tracks
By Donald Hall

A Small Motor
By Alberto Ríos

a song in the front yard
By Gwendolyn Brooks

A Visit from St. Nicholas
By Clement Clarke Moore

A World to Do
By Theodore Weiss

A Youth Mowing
By D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

About Patti Boyd and Me
By Eleanor Lerman

Abraham Lincoln
By Abraham Lincoln

Adolescence-II
By Rita Dove

Adult
By Ray Gonzalez

Aesthetics
By Amaud Jamaul Johnson

After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa
By Robert Hass

Against Pluralism
By Donald Revell

Alameda Street
By Douglas Kearney

All My Pretty Ones
By Anne Sexton

Along with Youth
By Ernest M. Hemingway

America
By Tony Hoagland

An Epitaph on S.P.
By Ben Jonson

from An Explanation of America: A Love of Death
By Robert Pinsky

An Unknown Friend
By Richard Emil Braun

Ancestor
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

Ancestral
By Archibald MacLeish

And as in Alice
By Mary Jo Bang

Ararat
By Mark Doty

Arms and the Boy
By Wilfred Owen

As Children Know
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

As Children Together
By Carolyn Forché

Astronomy Lesson
By Alan Shapiro

At Pegasus
By Terrance Hayes

At the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic
By Gail Mazur

At the Movie: Virginia, 1956
By Ellen Bryant Voigt

At the Sea-Side
By Robert Louis Stevenson

At the Vietnam Memorial
By George Bilgere

Aurora Leigh
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Autobiography
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ave Maria
By Frank O'Hara

“Alone”
By Edgar Allan Poe

“Luckies”
By Reginald Gibbons

“No Thank You, I Don’t Care For Artichokes,”
By Sandra M. Gilbert

“Yet, even ’mid merry boyhood’s tricks and scapes”
By Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

Baldwin
By E. Ethelbert Miller

Bath
By Stuart Dybek

Beauty
By Tony Hoagland

Bed in Summer
By Robert Louis Stevenson

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
By John Crowe Ransom

Between Assasinations
By Alan Shapiro

Between the Wars
By Robert Hass

Bewitched Playground
By David Rivard

Birches
By Robert Frost

Boy and Egg
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Boy and Father
By Carl Sandburg

Braid
By Susan Stewart

Branch Library
By Edward Hirsch

Brother
By Mary Ann Hoberman

Brother and Sister
By George Eliot

Buckdancer’s Choice
By James L. Dickey

Bus Trip
By Susan Mitchell

Cartoon Physics, part 1
By Nick Flynn

Cast Off
By Belle Randall

Change
By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Cherrylog Road
By James L. Dickey

Child on the Marsh
By Andrew Hudgins

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Third
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Childhood Ideogram
By Larry Levis

Childhood’s Retreat
By Robert Duncan

Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing
By Toi Derricotte

City Without a Name
By Czeslaw Milosz

Cleanliness
By Charles Lamb

Clothespins
By Stuart Dybek

Corpus Medicum
By C. Dale Young

Courtesy
By David Ferry

Cousin Nancy
By T. S. Eliot

Crossing the Days
By James Scruton

Daily Bread
By John Reibetanz

Dangers
By Rodney Jones

Dead Boy
By John Crowe Ransom

Deliberate
By Amy Uyematsu

Depression Glass
By Ted Kooser

Digging in a Footlocker
By Walter McDonald

Do You Love Me?
By Robert Wrigley

Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers
By Delmore Schwartz

Don Juan: Canto the First
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Dragonflies Mating
By Robert Hass

Dreams
By Nikki Giovanni

Dressing My Daughters
By Mark Jarman

Drill
By Michael Collier

Drowning in Wheat
By John Kinsella

Early June Meditation at Lakeside
By Colette Inez

Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
By B. H. Fairchild

Easter in Pittsburgh
By James Laughlin

Eating Together
By Li-Young Lee

Elegy for Peter
By Bruce Weigl

End of Winter
By Louise Glück

enuresis
By Cid Corman

from Epitaphs
By Abraham Sutzkever

Ex-Basketball Player
By John Updike

Falling From Us, Vanishings
By Alan Williamson

Father and Son
By Delmore Schwartz

Father, Where Do the Wild Swans Go?
By Ludwig Holstein

Fern Hill
By Dylan Thomas

Fierce Girl Playing Hopscotch
By Alice Fulton

First Coca-Cola
By Rodney Jones

First Fire
By Camille T. Dungy

First Grade Homework
By D. Nurkse

Floating Houses
By David Wojahn

Food
By Brenda Hillman

For the Taking
By Linda Gregerson

Forest Children
By Colette Inez

Foster Care
By Terry Wolverton

Four and a Half Dancing Men
By Anne Stevenson

Four Fibs
By A.E. Stallings

from Four Good Things
By James McMichael

Four Poems for a Child Son
By Simon Joseph Ortiz

Fragment of a Women from Kos
By Susan Mitchell

From the House of Yemanjá
By Audre Lorde

From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine
By Rosanna Warren

Gascoigne’s Lullaby
By George Gascoigne

Geometry
By Nancy Botkin

Getting Information Out of Pa
By Anonymous

Girlhood
By Jonathan Galassi

Goblin Market
By Christina Rossetti

God and the Fifties
By Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

Going Back
By Gregory Djanikian

Goose
By Richard Emil Braun

Granny
By James Whitcomb Riley

Halley’s Comet
By Stanley Kunitz

Hanging Fire
By Audre Lorde

Havana Birth
By Susan Mitchell

Heart’s Needle
By W. D. Snodgrass

Heaven
By Cathy Song

Holy Thursday: 'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean
By William Blake

Holy Thursday: Is this a holy thing to see
By William Blake

Homage to Buck Cline
By David Bottoms

Horses
By Wendell Berry

How Things Work
By Gary Soto

How to Continue
By John Ashbery

How We Were Introduced
By Zbigniew Herbert

Hugging the Jukebox
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Hump
By Irving Feldman

I Genitori Perduti
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I Hid my Love
By John Clare

Ice
By Gail Mazur

Ice Child
By John Haines

Imagining Their Own Hymns
By Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Immortality Ode
By Bruce Smith

In
By Andrew Hudgins

in Just-
By E. E. Cummings

In Memory of a Child
By Vachel Lindsay

In School-days
By John Greenleaf Whittier

In the Elementary School Choir
By Gregory Djanikian

Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth
By William Wordsworth

Introduction to the Songs of Innocence
By William Blake

Isla
By Virgil Suárez

Janet Waking
By John Crowe Ransom

January 22nd, Missolonghi
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

Jessie Mitchell’s Mother
By Gwendolyn Brooks

Joy
By Alan Shapiro

Killing Chickens
By Bruce Weigl

Landscape
By Thomas James Merton

Latin
By Herbert Morris

Laundry
By Bruce Smith

Learning the Bicycle
By Wyatt Prunty

Leaving the Island
By Sharon Olds

Legacies
By Nikki Giovanni

Lenox Hill
By Agha Shahid Ali

Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden
By Major Jackson

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
By William Wordsworth

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
By Matthew Arnold

Little Orphant Annie
By James Whitcomb Riley

Locksley Hall
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Long time a child, and still a child, when years
By Hartley Coleridge

Lusty Youth should us ensue
By Henry VIII, king of England

M. Degas Teaches Art & Science at Durfee Intermediate School
By Philip Levine

Madre Sofía
By Alberto Ríos

Makeup
By Dora Malech

Manufacturing
By Alan Shapiro

Meeting the Mountains
By Gary Snyder

Memory As a Hearing Aid
By Tony Hoagland

Men at My Father’s Funeral
By William Matthews

Messenger
By Dave Smith

Mississippi
By E. Ethelbert Miller

Mme. Sperides
By Gregory Djanikian

Money
By Reginald Gibbons

Monuments for a Friendly Girl at a Tenth Grade Party
By William E. Stafford

Mother/Child: Coda
By Alicia Ostriker

Mothers
By Nikki Giovanni

Mrs. Hill
By B. H. Fairchild

Musical Moments
By Dannie Abse

My Brother, the Artist, at Seven
By Philip Levine

My Century
By Alan Feldman

My Father in the Night Commanding No
By Louis Simpson

My Father's Diary
By Sharon Olds

My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow
By Robert Lowell

My Lost Youth
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Mother's Nipples
By Robert Hass

Natal Command
By Peter Sacks

Native Trees
By W. S. Merwin

Nikki-Rosa
By Nikki Giovanni

Nomadology
By Alissa Leigh

North of Childhood
By Jonathan Galassi

Nothing Gold can Stay
By Robert Frost

O Mistres Mine Where are you Roming?
By William Shakespeare

Oaxacan Stories
By Deborah Digges

Ode on a Grecian Urn
By John Keats

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
By William Wordsworth

Of the Last Verses in the Book
By Edmund Waller

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
By Robert Duncan

Old Folks at Home
By Stephen C. Foster

Old Toys Come Back
By Alan Williamson

On a Dead Child
By Robert Bridges

On A Moonstruck Gravel Road
By Rodney Torreson

On Being Twenty-six
By Philip Larkin

On Teaching the Young
By Yvor Winters

On the Gift of a Book to a Child
By Hilaire Belloc

On the Screened Porch
By Elizabeth Biller Chapman

On the Seashore
By Rabindranath Tagore

On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes
By Mary Szybist

One Possible Meaning
By Charlie Smith

One With The Sun
By A. F. Moritz

Our Father
By Irving Feldman

Out
By Andrew Hudgins

Partial Resemblance
By Denise Levertov

Passing Through
By Stanley Kunitz

Passtime with good company
By Henry VIII, king of England

Past-Lives Therapy
By Charles Simic

Paths
By John Montague

Pediatrics
By Carol Muske-Dukes

Persimmons
By Li-Young Lee

Piano
By D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Playing Dead
By Andrew Hudgins

Playroom
By Mary Barnard

Poem in October
By Dylan Thomas

Praise
By Stanley Moss

Pre-Text
By Marie Ponsot

Prodigy
By Charles Simic

Proust’s Madeleine
By Kenneth Rexroth

Quaker Meeting, The Sixties
By Robin Becker

Rabbi Ben Ezra
By Robert Browning

Reading to the Children
By Herbert Morris

Requiem for the First Half of Split
By Alice Notley

Retrospect
By Arthur Conan Doyle

Revelations in the Key of K
By Mary Karr

Rite of Passage
By Sharon Olds

from Rites of Passage
By Robert Duncan

Roots
By John Piller

Royalty
By Lianne Spidel

Rugby Chapel
By Matthew Arnold

Sabbath lie
By Yehuda Amichai

Sad Boy's Sad Boy
By Charles Bernstein

Sailing to America
By Gregory Djanikian

Salomé
By Ai

Santa Lucia
By Robert Hass

Saturday Night
By Alicia Ostriker

Saturn
By Cynthia Zarin

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children
By John Updike

Scary Movies
By Kim Addonizio

Scenes of Childhood
By James Merrill

Scrapbook
By George Scarbrough

Separation at Burnt Island
By D. Nurkse

Shame
By C. K. Williams

Shell
By Terry Wolverton

Shore Scene
By John Logan

Sidewalk Games
By Colleen J. McElroy

Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone
By Robert Louis Stevenson

Singing School
By Seamus Heaney

Slam, Dunk, & Hook
By Yusef Komunyakaa

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
By John Greenleaf Whittier

Some Words Inside of Words
By Richard Wilbur

Sonnet for September 27th
By Jack Prelutsky

Sonnet LX: Like as the Waves Make towards the Pebbled Shore
By William Shakespeare

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows
By William Shakespeare

Sonnet. To Tell the Truth
By Alicia Ostriker

Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy
By Lewis Carroll

Sphere
By Kate Gale

Spider Tumor
By Michael Collier

Spree
By Maxine W. Kumin

Spring
By Karla Kuskin

St. Peter Claver
By Toi Derricotte

Statue
By Tom Clark

Stella's Birthday March 13, 1719
By Jonathan Swift

Stink Eye
By Cathy Song

Subject To Change
By Marilyn Taylor

Supple Cord
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Suppose
By Phoebe Cary

Switchblade
By Michael Ryan

Synchronous Chronology
By Alice Notley

Taking Down the Tree
By Jane Kenyon

Taking Time to Grow
By Mary Mapes Dodge

Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons
By Diane Wakoski

The Abandoned Farm
By Mary Rose O'Reilley

The Age of Dinosaurs
By James Scruton

The Air Base at Châteauroux, France
By Sherod Santos

The Amenities
By Heather McHugh

The Appaloosa
By Afaa Michael Weaver

The Art Room
By Shara McCallum

The Babysitters
By Sylvia Plath

The Bad Old Days
By Kenneth Rexroth

The Ballad of the Children of the Czar
By Delmore Schwartz

The Barefoot Boy
By John Greenleaf Whittier

The Beggars
By Margaret Widdemer

The Bitterness of Children
By Thomas Lux

The Black Hose
By Bruce Weigl

The Black Swan
By James Merrill

The Blackstone Rangers
By Gwendolyn Brooks

The Book of Thel
By William Blake

The Broken Home
By James Merrill

The Burnt Child
By W. S. Merwin

The Campus on the Hill
By W. D. Snodgrass

The Cave
By Michael Collier

The Child
By Rabindranath Tagore

The Children
By Mark Jarman

The Children of Stare
By Walter De La Mare

The Children's Hour
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow
By William Blake

The circle game
By Margaret Atwood

The Closet
By Bill Knott

The Corner Grocery Store
By Walter McDonald

The Cruel Mother
By Brigit Pegeen Kelly

The Cut
By Ann Taylor

The Day Before Kindergarten: Taluca, Alabama, 1959
By Thylias Moss

The Days Gone By
By James Whitcomb Riley

The Dignity of Ushers
By Al Maginnes

The Diner
By Richard Jones

The Doll Believers
By Clarence Major

The Dream
By Irving Feldman

The Drowned Children
By Louise Glück

The Father of My Country
By Diane Wakoski

The Fearful Child
By Carol Frost

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
By Dylan Thomas

The Forsaken Merman
By Matthew Arnold

The Foundry Garden
By Stanley Plumly

The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field
By Richard F. Hugo

The Giant Slide
By Ted Kooser

The Gift
By Li-Young Lee

The Great Blue Heron
By Carolyn Kizer

The Halo That Would Not Light
By Lucie Brock-Broido

The Harp
By Bruce Weigl

The Hills of Youth
By Alfred Noyes

The Hospital Window
By James L. Dickey

The Human Seasons
By John Keats

The Icehouse in Summer
By Howard Nemerov

The Inheritance
By Stanley Moss

The Intruder
By Carolyn Kizer

The Journey
By David Ignatow

The Key to the City
By Anne Winters

The Key to the Kingdom
By Philip Gross

The Kid
By Ai

The Lamb
By William Blake

The Land of Counterpane
By Robert Louis Stevenson

The Leaf Pile
By Alicia Ostriker

The Life of Lincoln West
By Gwendolyn Brooks

The Little Black Boy
By William Blake

The Little Boy Lost
By William Blake

The Little Match Girl
By William McGonagall

The Little Orphan
By Edgar Albert Guest

The Man Splitting Wood in the Daybreak
By Galway Kinnell

The Men
By B. H. Fairchild

The Minks
By Toi Derricotte

The Month of June: 13 1/2
By Sharon Olds

The Mother’s Return
By Dorothy Wordsworth

The Mountain
By A. M. Klein

The Naughty Boy
By John Keats

The Night Would Grow Like a Telescope Pulled Out
By Alberto Ríos

The Ninth of July
By John Hollander

The Old Cumberland Beggar
By William Wordsworth

The Old Swimmin' Hole
By James Whitcomb Riley

The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers
By Andrew Marvell

The Pomegranate and the Big Crowd
By Alberto Ríos

from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time
By William Wordsworth

from The Prelude: Book 2: School-time (Continued)
By William Wordsworth

The Problem of Fiction
By Marie Ponsot

The Raggedy Man
By James Whitcomb Riley

The Raggedy Man
By James Whitcomb Riley

The Scholar-Gipsy
By Matthew Arnold

The School Where I Studied
By Yehuda Amichai

The Search Party
By William Matthews

The Silver Lily
By Louise Glück

The Step Mother
By Susanna Moodie

The Swing
By Robert Louis Stevenson

The Testing-Tree
By Stanley Kunitz

The Time of Youth is to be Spent
By Henry VIII, king of England

The Troubles That Women Start Are Men
By Rodney Jones

The Tummy Beast
By Roald Dahl

The Weakness
By Toi Derricotte

The White Porch
By Cathy Song

The Wooden Toy
By Charles Simic

The Youngest Daughter
By Cathy Song

Theme for English B
By Langston Hughes

Theme in Yellow
By Carl Sandburg

Then and Now
By Babette Deutsch

There was a Boy
By William Wordsworth

There was a little girl
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was a Young Lady Whose Eyes
By Edward Lear

They Will Say
By Carl Sandburg

This Room and Everything in It
By Li-Young Lee

Those Winter Sundays
By Robert E. Hayden

Though some Saith that Youth Ruleth me
By Henry VIII, king of England

Three Songs at the End of Summer
By Jane Kenyon

Through a Glass Eye, Lightly
By Carolyn Kizer

Tiger Butter
By Diane Glancy

To a Child in Heaven
By Richard Emil Braun

To a Young Poet who Killed Himself
By Joyce Kilmer

To an Athlete Dying Young
By A. E. Housman

To Any Reader
By Robert Louis Stevenson

To D-, Dead by Her Own Hand
By Howard Nemerov

To David, About His Education
By Howard Nemerov

To My Daughter in a Red Coat
By Anne Stevenson

To My Father's Business
By Kenneth Koch

To the Cuckoo
By William Wordsworth

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
By John Dryden

To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew
By John Dryden

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
By Robert Herrick

Too Many Daves
By Theodor Geisel

Toth Farry
By Sharon Olds

Toys in a Field
By Yusef Komunyakaa

Tree Ferns
By Stanley Plumly

United Jewish Appeal
By Michael C. Blumenthal

Upon the Disobedient Child
By John Bunyan

Urban Renewal XVIII.
By Major Jackson

Vacant Lot
By Dudley Randall

Victory
By Fanny Howe

Vietnam
By Michael Collier

Waiting
By Nikki Grimes

Washington Square
By Frederick Morgan

Wax Lips
By Cynthia Rylant

We Are Seven
By William Wordsworth

We Real Cool
By Gwendolyn Brooks

Weighing In
By Rhina P. Espaillat

Well, You Needn’t
By William Matthews

What For
By Garrett Hongo

When I Was Fair and Young
By Elizabeth I

Where Are the Waters of Childhood?
By Mark Strand

Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game
By Denis Johnson

Winesaps
By Dave Smith

Winter
By Czeslaw Milosz

Without Toys at the Home
By Colette Inez

Written for my Son, and Spoken by Him at his First Putting on Breeches
By Mary Barber

Yarrow Revisited
By William Wordsworth

Yellow Dress
By Amy Beeder

Yellow Glove
By Naomi Shihab Nye

You are Old, Father William
By Lewis Carroll

You Were You Are Elegy
By Mary Jo Bang

Young Love
By Andrew Marvell

Youth
By James Wright

Youth and Art
By Robert Browning

Youth and Calm
By Matthew Arnold

[anyone lived in a pretty how town]
By E. E. Cummings

[if mama / could see]
By Lucille Clifton

[Over a cup of coffee]
By Stephen Dobyns