Are you a mother who finds joy in the simple, everyday moments with your children?
Imagine reading verses that perfectly reflect your experiences and the love you feel for your little ones.
Here is our collection of 10 endearing poems about children, crafted to warm your heart and inspire your soul.
Let the fun begin!
My favorite poem about children for mothers
#1 “Good and Bad Children” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Children, you are very little,
And your bones are very brittle;
If you would grow great and stately,
You must try to walk sedately.
You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewild’ring,
Innocent and honest children.
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places—
That was how, in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
But the unkind and the unruly,
And the sort who eat unduly,
They must never hope for glory—
Theirs is quite a different story!
Cruel children, crying babies,
All grew up as geese and gabies,
Hated, as their age increases,
By their nephews and their nieces.
This poem really speaks to me about raising kids with love and care.
It reminds me of the values that help them grow into happy, wise people, which is what I want for my children.
I adore how it captures the joy of childhood and the important lessons they learn.
It inspires me to enjoy the little moments of being a mom and pass on these values to my kids.
9 more poems about children for mothers
#2 “Growth” by Ernest Christopher Dowson
I watched the glory of her childhood change,
Half-sorrowful to find the child I knew,
(Loved long ago in lily-time)
Become a maid, mysterious and strange,
With fair, pure eyes–dear eyes, but not the eyes I knew
Of old, in the olden time!
Till on my doubting soul the ancient good
Of her dear childhood in the new disguise
Dawned, and I hastened to adore
The glory of her waking maidenhood,
And found the old tenderness within her deepening eyes,
But kinder than before.
#3 “Love and Duty To Parents” by Unknown
My father, my mother, I know,
I cannot your kindness repay;
But I hope that, as older I grow,
I shall learn your commands to obey.
You loved me before I could tell
Who it was that so tenderly smiled;
But now that I know it so well,
I should be a dutiful child.
I am sorry that ever I should
Be naughty and give you a pain;
I hope I shall learn to be good,
And so never grieve you again.
But, for fear that I should dare
From all your commands to depart,
Whenever I’m saying my prayer
I’ll ask for a dutiful heart.
#4 “The Days Gone” by James Whitcomb Riley
O the days gone by! O the days gone by!
The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye;
The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail
As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale;
When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky,
And my happy heart brimmed over, in the days gone by.
In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped
By the honeysuckle tangles where the water-lilies dipped,
And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink
Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink,
And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant’s wayward cry
And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by.
O the days gone by! O the days gone by!
The music of the laughing lip, the lustre of the eye;
The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring—
The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,—
When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,
In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.
#5 “The Child in the Garden” by Henry van Dyke
When to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown and found unsought.
Then just within the gate I saw a child,—
A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear,—
Who held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear:
“Come in,” he said, “and play awhile with me;
I am the little child you used to be.”
#6 “Children” by Walter Savage Landor
Children are what the mothers are.
No fondest father’s fondest care
Can fashion so the infant heart
As those creative beams that dart,
With all their hopes and fears, upon
The cradle of a sleeping son.
His startled eyes with wonder see
A father near him on his knee,
Who wishes all the while to trace
The mother in his future face;
But ’t is to her alone uprise
His waking arms; to her those eyes
Open with joy and not surprise.
#7 “The Children Of The Poor” by Victor-Marie Hugo
Take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin’s ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that weep!
#8 “Girls And Boys” by Walter Crane
1.
Girls and boys come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper, and leave your sleep;
Come to your playfellows in the street;
2.
Come with a whoop, and come with a call.
Come with a good will or not at all.
Up the ladder and down the wall,
A penny loaf will serve you all.
#9 “Amid The Roses” by John B. Tabb
There was laughter ‘mid the Roses,
For it was their natal day;
And the children in the garden were
As light of heart as they.
There were sighs amid the Roses,
For the night was coming on;
And the children—weary now of play—
Were ready to be gone.
There are tears amid the Roses,
For the children are asleep;
And the silence of the garden makes
The lonely blossoms weep.
#10 “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.