The End -- A A Milne

(Poem #1097) The End When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three, I was hardly Me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever. So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. -- A A Milne

        (from "Now We Are Six")

I'm almost certain that Billy Collins had this childhood classic at the back
of his mind when he wrote "On Turning Ten" [Poem #1096]. He appears to have
answered from an adult perspective -- but one that would be interesting to
share with a 10-year-old,"  whereas Milne wrote from what he must have imagined
was a child's perspective. However. I think children of six have a much clearer
sense of anticipation of the future than the title of Milne's poem -- "The End"
-- would imply. They are just starting school, learning to read and write, and
they can already count quite well, certainly up to and beyond what Collins
calls "the first big number." I think that excitement about what comes next,
even if it is a little scary, is probably more dominant than the complacency of
"I think I'll be six for ever and ever."

Writing what is in children's minds, or what was in ones own mind as a child
or indeed at any time in the past,  is always a challenge; the more I look
at children the more I believe that even very small children think in more
complicated ways than many adults would like to believe.

To its credit, though, "The End" is a fine poem for early readers of
English, with its reassuring repeated syntactical structures on the one hand
and the rhymes that exhibit the devilish vagaries of English spelling on the
other.

-- Vivian