# The Child — Poetry character guide

> The Child in Poetry by Edward Thomas.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0102-the-child-on-the-cliffs

## Snapshot

A small girl who plucks feathers from the door-side bush, she embodies the unthinking intimacy with place and growing things that the poems' speakers have lost.

## Who they are

She moves through these poems as a figure of first belonging — the child who waits at the bush, snipping and shrivelling Old Man's leaves, who found the celandines of February before anyone else, whose nature and name were like those flowers. Where the adult speakers circle grief, memory, and the impossibility of return, she simply inhabits what they can only long for. Her presence sharpens the ache at the heart of the book: that love of a place, once broken, cannot be recovered whole.

## Relationships

### [Old Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/characters/old_man)

_family_

The Old Man appears to be a guardian or grandfather figure to The Child.

### [Old Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/characters/old_man)

_family_

The Old Man appears to be a guardian or grandfather figure to The Child.

## In the story

### [The Path](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-path)

The children who wear the path with their feet year after year, using it for looking down the steep slope and for imaginative play.

### [Early One Morning](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/early-one-morning)

Implied through the shepherd's address 'sir' and the speaker's reference to 'my youth'.

### [The Green Roads](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-green-roads)

A child alone who also strays from a cottage along the green road.

### [Gone, Gone Again](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/gone-gone-again)

Referenced implicitly through the memory of youth and the lost one who was here.

### [The Penny Whistle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-penny-whistle)

The girl reading a letter under the crescent moon.

### [Old Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/old-man)

A child who plucks feathers from the bush, snips them, and sniffs her fingers, silent and absorbed.

### [The Child on the Cliffs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-child-on-the-cliffs)

The speaker who observes the grasshopper and the sea, and expresses a desire to be dead yet still hear the bell.

### [Good Night](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/good-night)

The children whose calls in the streets create a magical welcome for the speaker.

### [The Child in the Orchard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-child-in-the-orchard)

The speaker, a curious child exploring the orchard and questioning the world.

### [Snow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/snow)

The child is sighing and crying over the death of a white bird in the snow.

### [The Brook](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-brook)

The child paddling in the brook who speaks the line 'No one's been here before.'

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/characters/the_child
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_5_se/characters