The greatest poem ever known 
Is one all poets have outgrown: 
The poetry, innate, untold, 
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part 
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart, 
Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree 
And unselfconscious as the bee-

And yet with lovely reason skilled 
Each day new paradise to build; 
Elate explorer of each sense, 
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes 
There is no conscience, no surprise: 
Life’s queer conundrums you accept, 
Your strange divinity still kept.

Being, that now absorbs you, all 
Harmonious, unit, integral, 
Will shred into perplexing bits,- 
Oh, contradictions of the wits!

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme, 
may make you poet, too, in time- 
But there were days, O tender elf, 
When you were Poetry itself! 

—Christopher Morley