John Greenleaf Whittier's "The Barefoot Boy" is reminiscent of Dylan Thomas' "Fern Hill"; both dramatize memories of boyhood. Whittier offers a special nod to summer.
John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Barefoot Boy” consists of 102 lines, most of which are couplets, with the exception of two triplets. The poem has five stanzas.
First Stanza: “Blessing on thee, little man”
The speaker is addressing a little boy who has been enjoying summer: the boy’s cheeks are sun-kissed; he is wearing his pants rolled up, probably for wading the creek, and the boy is whistling a “merry…tune.” The boy gets to enjoy ripe strawberries that make his lips red, and he wears a hat, probably a straw hat, whose “torn brim” displays a “jaunty grace.”
Although the speaker has been moved to remark on all the summer happiness this young boy is celebrating, in line 10 we learn how closely the speaker identities with the lad: “From my heart I give thee joy,— / I was once a barefoot boy!”
Then the speaker declares that the barefoot boy is richer than royalty or at least richer in joy than the grown-up: “Prince thou art,—the grown-up man / Only is republican.” The barefoot boy does not have to worry about the duties of citizenship that concern those in charge of the republic. The speaker repeats his blessings on the boy.
Second Stanza: “Oh for boyhood’s painless play”
In the second stanza, the speaker further dramatizes the advantages of being just a barefoot boy in summer, and the reader understands that he is as much speaking about his own boyhood as of the boy on whom he first wished blessings. The barefoot boy wakes up to a “laughing day,” and his boyhood is filled with “painless play.”
The speaker asserts and celebrates the intuitive knowledge that the boy enjoys as well as his glowing health: “Health that mocks the doctor’s rules, / Knowledge never learned of schools.” Again, the speaker heaps blessings on the barefoot boy.
Third Stanza: “Oh for boyhood’s time of June”
In the third stanza, the speaker directly relates his own summer experience: “I was rich in flowers and trees, / Humming-birds and honey-bees.”
The glories of seeing this young lad looking so much like the speaker when he was young has sparked this nostalgic journey back through the speaker’s childhood memories.
Fourth Stanza: “Oh for festal dainties spread”
The fourth stanza allows the speaker to continue his own journey of joy of being a boy in summer: “O’er me, like a regal tent, / Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, / Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold; / While for music came the play / Of the pied frogs’ orchestra.” The speaker shares his memories of the look of the sky and sunset and the sounds of frogs that filled the night.
And then he also likens himself to royalty as he did the boy: “I was monarch: pomp and joy /
Waited on the barefoot boy!”
Fifth Stanza: “Cheerily, then, my little man”
In the fifth stanza, the speaker returns to the present and the boy to whom he has been addressing his memories. He bids the boy, “Live and laugh, as boyhood can!”
He admonishes the lad to enjoy those summer days of being a barefoot boy, because the duties of adulthood will come soon enough, and the speaker ends, realizing that the boy will probably not able to grasp the blessedness of his state: “Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, / Ere it passes, barefoot boy!”
But the speaker offers at least a ray of hope that his review of the lad’s situation as well as his own will help the boy understand how happy joyous summer should be.
Summer Poem Poll
Please take a moment to vote for your favorite summer poem in this month’s poll. Your choices are:
1. Emily Dickinson’s “I know a place where Summer strives”
2. John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Barefoot Boy”
3. James Whitcomb Riley’s “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”
4. Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird”
5. Amy Lowell’s “Penumbra”
The poll is located under the blog on the homepage of the Poetry site. Thank you for participating in this month’s poll.
