My Parents
Stephen Spender * Track #4 On Songs of Ourselves
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Album Songs of Ourselves
- #1Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
- #2One Art
Elizabeth Bishop
- #3Song: Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
- #4My Parents
Stephen Spender
- #5For Heidi With Blue Hair
Fleur Adcock
- #6Praise Song for My Mother
Grace Nichols
- #7Elegy for My Father’s Father
James K. Baxter
- #8The Trees Are Down
Charlotte Mew
- #9Attack
Siegfried Sassoon
- #10Reservist
Boey Kim Cheng
- #11Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
- #12Friend
Hone Tuwhare
- #13Horses
Edwin Muir
- #14The Planners
Boey Kim Cheng
- #15A Mind Content
Robert Greene (1560-92)
My Parents by Stephen Spender
Performed by
Stephen SpenderAbout
The poem deals with the class system early in the twentieth century. (The poet was born in 1909).
The treatment of the subject is complex, dealing with themes of class, snobbery, freedom and restriction, bullying and delinquency, fear and alienation contrasted with secret envy.
It is interesting t...
My Parents Annotated
[Stanza 1]
My parents kept me from children who were rough
Who threw words like stones and wore torn clothes
Their thighs shown through rags. They ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
[Stanza 2]
I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
Their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms
I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys
Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.
[Stanza 3]
They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud
While I looked the other way, pretending to smile
I longed to forgive them but they never smiled.
My Parents Q&A
Is this in blank verse?
Yes, there is no regular rhyme scheme or meter.