There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. The rustling of a wild-bird's wings, I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.
Elizabeth Lawrence
John Betjeman
A star, a flower, a gush of rain,
The sight of sad or joyous things,
Oft makes me seem a child again:
With voiceless eloquence they come,
Bright phantoms of my childhood's home.
ROSA VERTNER JEFFREY, "My Childhood's Home"
Williston Fish, "A Last Will"
