Available Answers

1. 1.

   What are the child and the speaker doing in the morning?

2. 2.

   Why would the child think the adult's game was 'stupid'?

3. 3.

   What is 'art', according to the speaker?

4. 4.

   What is the 'frail canoe'? What is the speaker guiding it towards?

5. 5.

   The poem is a study of the simplicity of childhood in comparison with the anxiety caused by the demands of adulthood. What is the message the speaker wishes to convey to readers through the 'conversation' between child and adult?

6. 6.

   Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.
   I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.
   I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour.

   What is repeated here? What is it contrasted against? Why is it important to the poem?