To a Child

memory hope reflective

To a Child - meaning Summary

Innocence Meets Sacrificial Vision

Judith Wright's 'To a Child' recalls a childhood encounter with a burning bird and other violent, luminous scenes that shape the speaker's understanding. The poem balances images of pain and sacred light to argue that the world contains both suffering and truth. Addressed to a child, it reassures that grief is not the only outcome: destruction and desire coexist with renewal and a kind of holy persistence.

Read Complete Analyses

When I was a child I saw a burning bird in a tree. I see became I am, I am became I see. In winter dawns of frost the lamp swung in my hand. The battered moon on the slope lay like a dune of sand; and in the trap at my feet the rabbit leapt and prayed, weeping blood, and crouched when the light shone on the blade. The sudden sun lit up the webs from wire to wire; the white webs, the white dew, blazed with a holy fire. Flame of light in the dew, flame of blood on the bush answered the whirling sun and the voice of the early thrush. I think of this for you. I would not have you believe the world is empty of truth or that men must grieve, but hear the song of the martyrs out of a bush of fire- 'All is consumed with love; all is renewed with desire.'