MY PARENTS KEPT ME FROM CHILDREN WHO WERE ROUGH

Stephen Spender

My parents kept me from children who were rough

Who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.
Their thighs showed through rags. They ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.
5 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.
They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
10 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.

About the poet

Stephen Spender (1909 – 1995) was born on 28 February 1909 in London and was
educated at Oxford University. As a young man he was a member of a group of
revolutionary poets such as WH Auden and Cecil Day Lewis. Throughout his life, Spender
supported the cause of the underprivileged. He wrote mostly about the technical aspects
of modern life, like trains, airports, etc. Spender, however, became much more famous
as a critic than a poet.

Structure
This poem is a lyric and consists of three four-line stanzas (quatrains). The poem is written in blank verse, i.e.
the lines of the poem don’t rhyme. The blank verse form saves the poem from becoming sentimental; in fact, it
makes the poem almost harsh in its clear, factual statements.
The poem tells the, apparently autobiographical, story of a sensitive boy who lives a sheltered life and must
grow up among a number of rough boys his parents do not regard as suitable playmates.

Theme
The major theme is the effect that social prejudice has on children. It also includes underlying themes like
bullying.
 Analysis
Stanza 1
The poet admits that when he was young, his parents would not allow him to mix with a group of rude, noisy
children whom they regarded as their social inferiors. The fears of his parents were justified, because these
children were rough and abusive.
Line 1: The word “kept” describes the parents’ attempts to protect the poet from the children of a lower social
class. “Rough” means both noisy or violent and rude or impolite.
Line 2: Whenever they met the young boy in the street, they taunted him with insults that came at him like
stones thrown in anger. The simile threw words like stones (line 2) is very effective in describing the children’s
spiteful attitude towards the poet: their taunts hurt like sharp-edged stones thrown with brutal force.
Line 3: These children were obviously poor and neglected as they wore ragged clothes through which their
thighs showed. The middle class demanded that a person be well dressed, but especially that their lower body
be fully hidden. To reveal one’s thigh would be regarded as deeply immoral. The image of the street children’s
torn clothing, their rags, gives a clue to their motive for treating the more fortunate boy so badly: they were
jealous because he was apparently so much better off than they were.
Line 4: They also ran about in the streets, climbed cliffs and swam naked in the streams outside town. At the
same time the poet admits to admiring these children for doing such daring things as running in the streets,
climbing cliffs and swimming naked in the streams and being jealous of them because he obviously was not
allowed to do such things. These are all activities that showed they were part of the working/lower class.
The poem attempts to depict a mood of despair, i.e. the poet’s despair at being unable to cope with the rough
children. Throughout this stanza we notice that the poet is wistful and longs for the freedom the rough street
children enjoyed.
Stanza 2
The poet recalls that he feared their strong muscles more than he ever felt afraid of fierce tigers, especially
when the grabbed him, pushed him around and then threw him to the ground, sitting on his chest, pinning his
arms to the ground with their knees. This stanza contains a series of images describing the poet’s direct contact
with the gang of street children.
Line 5: The simile I feared more than tigers is the first comparison of the children to wild animals. It could also
be a hyperbole as the poet overexaggerates their actions and strength. The image of a fierce, cruel predator
pinning down and tearing at its prey reinforces the images of the first stanza.
The simile muscles like iron also links up with the imagery of stanza 1 which describes the street children as
roughly active and adventurous; this has developed their muscles and intensifies the image of the young boy’s
complete defencelessness against them.
Line 7: He also feared their hurtfully rude words. The word “coarse” in the salt-coarse pointing has a double
meaning as a metaphor: firstly, it means to have large granules, like coarse salt, but it also means rude. The
word salt likewise could mean two things: it could refer to the salty taste of tears, which would make this a
metaphor indicating that he cried, but it could also refer to the expression to rub salt in an open wound. In this
case, it could be an indication of how deeply their rude pointing fingers hurt the feelings of the timid, sensitive
boy. Together, the words salt and coarse therefore creates a vivid image of the hurtful effect the mockery of
the rough boys had on the poet.
Line 8: They also made fun of the poet’s speech impediment (lisp) behind his back. “Lisp” is a speech defect in
which s is pronounced like th in thick and z is pronounced like th in this. Lisp is further associated with very
young children, strengthening the image of the poet’s innocent immaturity at that stage.
Stanza 3
The rough boys were supple and energetic. Evidently, they hid behind hedges and other suitable hiding places
and jumped out when the boy passed to shout rude remarks at him. The poet remembers how he longed to
forgive his tormentors, but they never responded to his attempts to be friendly.
Line 9: The poet further illustrates his envy for the rough street children. Indeed, they were ‘lithe’ (slender, fast
moving and bending with ease) which he could never become due to his impediments and the fact that his
parents’ protective nature prevented him from partaking in any of their activities.
Line 10: In the previous stanza, the street children are compared to fierce, merciless tigers. In the simile “like
dogs” they are compared to cowardly dogs attacking from behind the cover of hedges, etc. Note the difference
in the two animal images: the tiger hunts on its own, while now the children are compared to a pack of wild
dogs, running down its prey, not allowing it to rest. This reinforces the idea, present throughout the poem, that
the street children are cowards, ganging up on the smaller, defenceless boy.
The image “to bark at my world” effectively illustrates the rough boys’ harsh, coarse voices and words. They
were victims themselves of poverty and neglect, and for those reasons hated anybody who was better off. In
the innocent, defenceless boy whose parents were fairly rich, and therefore lived in an entirely different world,
they found an ideal victim on whom to vent their hatred.
When they threw mud at him, he looked the other way and pretended to smile. The dictionary meaning
(denotation) of mud is soft, wet earth, but figuratively it means the lowest or worst part of anything. Remember
the expression to throw mud at somebody, which means to speak evil of him. Note how the street children’s
attitude has become worse: in the first stanza they threw words, now they are throwing mud. Note, they are
not literally throwing mud – it refers to the insults and taunting remarks of the bullies that make the boy feel
dirty as if he is covered in mud.
Line 11 and 12: …I looked another way, pretending to smile links up with the boy’s longing to forgive his enemies
to reveal his innocence – it also teaches the Christian idea of turning the other cheek. This line is also an example
of pathos: the boy’s pathetic attempts to be friendly and to show his attackers that he understands why they
hate him, arouse the reader’s sympathy.
 Questions
1. What type of poem is this?
2. What is the central theme of the poem?
3. What is the main idea of the first stanza?
4. What was the poet’s parents’ attitude towards the rough boys?
5. Comment on the effectiveness of the figure of speech used in line 2.
6. What adventurous things did the street children do?
7. What is the main idea of the second stanza?
8. Explain the image of the tigers (line 5) in your own words.
9. Which word in stanza 2 suggest that the actions of the boys were animalistic?
10. Explain the image of the salt-coarse pointing (line 7).
11. Refer to line 10 “they threw mud”. Is this action literal or figurative? Support your answer.
12. What does my world mean in the context of the poem?
13. In what way can the last stanza be regarded as an example of pathos?