The three stanzas describe the poet's complex relationship with street children as a child. His parents tried to protect him from the rough children due to class differences. While he feared their strength and mocking behavior, copying his lisp, he also admired their freedom and felt jealous. In the last stanza, he pretends to smile and wants to forgive them, but they do not reciprocate his friendly gestures. The poem explores the poet's ambivalence towards the children and social class divisions.

1. MY PARENTS KEPT ME FROM
CHILDREN WHO WERE ROUGH
STUDY

3. My parents kept me from children who were rough
and who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.
Their thighs showed through rags. They ran in the street
And climbed cliffs and stripped by the country streams.

4. I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron
And their jerking hands and their knees tight on my arms.
I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys
Who copied my lisp behind me on the road.

5. They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at our world. They threw mud
And I looked another way, pretending to smile,
I longed to forgive them, yet they never smiled.

7. Stephen Spender was an English poet, essayist and
novelist who dealt with the theme of social injustice and
class disparities. His parents were literary people too.
Stephen Spender had a foot affliction and he lisped
while he spoke; this made his parents extra careful
about exposing him to rough handling and bullying in
school.A reading of this poem however makes us
wonder whether he approved of that move entirely. He
seems to have been ambivalent about the whole issue.
He was not comfortable with the roughness of the street
children either.

9. This poem has strong autobiographical overtones. Stephen
Spender had a club foot and he lisped while talking. His
parents tried to shelter him from the rough street children.
While Spender seems to have been uncomfortable with their
coarse speech and rude gestures, he admired the strength of
their bodies and the freedom they enjoyed.They could come
and go as they liked and they were uninhibited (“stripped by
the country streams”). His overtures of friendship were
rebuffed by them; perhaps they mistrusted people of his class.
The tone is in parts wistful and there is a longing for physical
perfection that he could see in the children.

11. The first two stanzas describe why his parents kept Spender
away from the street children. In the last stanza he says,
though he was afraid of their ways and feared their strength,
he wanted to be friendly but they rebuffed his overtures of
friendship. The children were coarse and rude in speech.The
speaker says that they flung out words like they would stones.
Their clothes were in tatters and their lithe bodies showed
through the tears.They spent the day roaming the town and
the countryside.The poet seems to have feared their strong
bodies more than the words they flung about as they were
capable of inflicting pain on him. In spite of that he tried to be
friendly with them but they rebuffed him.

13. This poem could be a personal or biographical depiction of
Spender’s early life suffering the disability of a club foot and a
speech impediment. The use of the first person, stark
contrasts, and ambiguity give us a vivid picture of a child
troubled by a superiority/inferiority complex.
While his parents are condescending towards the rough coarse
children, the child appears envious of their carefree liberty,
their unbridled animal prowess and uninhibited playfulness,
yet resentful of their bullying behaviour to him. We can
visualise the persona through antithesis.

14. He is everything that they are not; softly spoken (words like
stones), well dressed (torn clothes, rags), passive (they ran and
climbed), inhibited – modesty (they stripped by country
streams), weak (muscles of iron), well mannered (salt course
pointing), lisp (parodied by copying), clumsy (lithe), and
friendly (hostile – they never smiled).

15. His attempts at conciliation and acceptance are rebuffed but
he appears to blame his parents for psychologically damaging
him by over protection or shielding him from a natural
childhood. While their superior attitude (snobbery?) has
excluded him from mainstream society he ambivalently
identifies with his parents by having the boys spring “like dogs
to bark at our world”.
Who is more to blame, the boys or his parents? Good
literature avoids giving answers but rather allows the
responders to do their own thinking and reach their own
conclusions.

17. Stanza 1
The poet’s parents sought to protect him from
the street children.They were rude in speech
and were dressed in rags.They were
uninhibited and stripped off their clothes and
swam in the country rivers.

18. Stanza 2
The speaker feared the brute strength of the boys.They
were muscular and did not hesitate to use their arms
and legs.The poet was also scared of their mocking
ways.They laughed behind his back, imitating his lisp.

19. Stanza 3
The boys were like vandals; they threw mud at people
and pounced on them. But despite all this, the speaker
was forgiving. He wanted to be friendly and smiled at
them. But they did not reciprocate the friendly
overtures.

21. The poet is really scared of the boys who live on the streets.
They belong to a different world altogether.The parents try to
protect him from them.While the speaker fears their superior
strength, he also admires it. In some ways, he is superior to
them but in other ways, he is inferior.This ambivalence runs
through the poem.

22. “My Parents Kept Me From Children WhoWere Rough” deals
with class differences. The adult poet looks back at how it felt
to be a child whose middle-class parents warned him to stay
away from the “rough” working-class boys.
The poem’s narrator is ambivalent. Like his parents, he is
afraid of the rough boys, but he also feels a mixture of
attraction, jealousy and shame.

23. The poem begins, “My parents kept me from children who
were rough.” It would have been more accurate to say that his
parents *tried* to keep him from children who were rough
because his parents weren’t fully successful I keeping their son
and the rough children apart.

24. The rough children follow the narrator on the road, imitating
his lisp. They pin him down – “their knees tight on [his] arms”
– or at least he feared that they would. There is a gap between
his parents’ intentions and the reality of his life.
The narrator envies the freedom of the rough boys, the way
they can run in the street, climb cliffs, and strip by the country
streams. The narrator must have been expected to act with
middle-class propriety, walking demurely down the street,
never going outside wearing torn clothing.

25. To the narrator, the rough children are wild. He compares
them to tigers and dogs. Like animals, the children were free
from having to abide by suffocating middle-class conventions,
and the narrator is jealous.
The tone of the poem shifts in the last two lines: “While I
looked the other way, pretending to smile. / I longed to forgive
them, but they never smiled.”

26. The narrator only pretends to smile. Conventional polite
middle-class behaviour often requires people to put on a
phony smile. That may smooth over some social interactions,
but it also can create distance. A genuine smile brings people
closer together. It is infectious. We instinctively respond to a
genuine smile with one of our own. A real smile can bridge
gaps between people, creating communication between
people who speak different languages – or who come from
different classes.
The rough boys, though, don’t respond to the narrator’s phony
smile. The narrator is disappointed. But why did he “long[] to
forgive them” in the first place?

27. At first glance, the line about forgiveness seems
condescending – who is he to offer forgiveness to them? But
there are two things he might have wanted to forgive. The
first is the way the rough boys treated him personally, making
fun of his lisp and pinning him down. The second is for their
side in the class struggle, their “bark[ing]” at the narrator’s
world.
Unless the narrator can offer more than a phony smile,
though, his offer of forgiveness will not be accepted. Perhaps
that is what Spender, as an adult poet, now realizes as he looks
back at an earlier time.

29. Line 1 –The boy’s parents try to keep him away from the
bullies as the family comes from a privileged social
background.
Line 2 –Their words hurt him in the same way real stones
would do.
Lines 3-4 –The poet feels admiration and jealousy since these
boys enjoy a greater freedom than his. He cannot be that free
due to the constant supervision of his parents.

30. Line 5 –The boys were stronger than him and he was afraid of
them.
Lines 7-8 –The use of the word “salt” may refer to the boys’
feeling that by making fun of his speech defect they are adding
insult to injury and rubbing salt into the wound.
Line 9 – Bullies are very agile, active and always up to trouble.
The poet uses hard consonants to imply the roughness of the
bullies.
Line 10 –The boy does not like being of a higher class as the
bullies do not allow him to fit in.
Line 12 – It is very clear that there is a gap between what the
poet wants and what is actually happening in reality.

32. 3 stanzas
No rhyming scheme
Enjambment (“….from children who were rough /
and who threw …”)

34. Social class which brings about
bullying and intolerance.A boy
being bullied by a group of children
coming from a different family
class.

36. Sadness (“threw words like stones”)
Fear (“I feared more than tigers their muscles like
iron”), (“I feared the salt course pointing of those
boys”)
Jealousy (“They ran in the street / And climbed cliffs
and stripped by the country streams”)

38. Harsh as the poet uses hard consonants,
but there is a shift of tone as it becomes
softer in the last stanza

40. Animal imagery (“dogs”, “tigers”)

42. Similes (“threw words like stones”); (“muscles
like iron”); (“Like dogs to bark at our world”)
Metaphor (“I feared more than tigers”)
Alliteration (“climbed cliffs”)

44. “My Parents Kept Me From Children WhoWere Rough” (often
shortened to “My Parents Kept Me”) is thought to be very
autobiographical. Stephen Spender, who came from a middle-
class family, was brought up with the mentality of being better
than the working class children in every aspect. Hence the
main theme put forth in this poem is that of class differences
which in turn bring about bullying and intolerance.

45. The adult poet looks back on his childhood and recalls how his
parents used to warn him to stay away from “rough” working-
class boys. The poem’s speaker is ambivalent (he faces a
dilemma). His parents’ concern and suspicion of the boys has
rubbed off on him. On the other hand, it is also true that the
poet feels a certain admiration and jealousy since these boys
enjoy a greater freedom than he does. They can actually do
whatever they want, whenever they want. This is something
he is not allowed to experience because of the constant
parental surveillance (SUPERVISION). Furthermore, he feels a
sense of shame at being part of a higher class than theirs since
this does not allow him to fit in.

46. The poem starts with the verse, My Parents Kept me from
children who were rough, which is not completely accurate.
The parents rather try to keep their son away from these
miscreants but are not totally successful. In fact, the boys
follow the narrator wherever he goes and imitate his lisp (A
SPEECH IMPEDIMENT). They even abuse him physically –
their knees tight on [his] arms. So it is very clear that there is a
significant gap between what the parents want and what is
actually happening in reality.

47. As mentioned before, the narrator envies the freedom of the
rough boys, and this is evident in the way he writes about how
they run in the street, climb cliffs, and strip by the country
streams. Contrastingly, the middle-class propriety required
the narrator to walk demurely (IN A PROPER MANNER) and to
always be appropriately dressed.

48. The wild nature of the boys comes out strongly through
Spender’s use of Animal Imagery. We see how the boy feared
more than tigers their muscles like iron and how he perceives
(SEES) the boys as dogs that are ready to bark at his world.

49. In the last stanza, there is a shift in tone when the poet writes:
While I looked the other way, pretending to smile
I longed to forgive them, but they never smiled.
We note how the poet only pretends to smile; this can be
taken as an attempt on the narrator’s part to befriend the
rough boys. A smile is a universal (WORLD-WIDE) code for
friendship and it can, at times, smooth over (SOLVE) any social
issues (PROBLEMS) that there might be. Unfortunately, the
rough boys do not respond to this attempt and this
disappoints the narrator. The fact that he feels to be in a
position to forgive them might sound condescending (TO
HAVEA SENSEOF SUPERIORITY). He might feel he needs to
forgive them for hurting him personally, but also for his class
to forgive their class for barking at their world.

51. The poem is divided into three stanzas of four verses each.
The lines are roughly of the same length, containing from 10 to
12 syllables each. The rhythm of the poem is irregular and the
fact that there is no fixed rhyming pattern suggests that
Stephen Spender meant the poem to be more of a narrative.

52. As regards diction, there seems to be a repetition of the word
‘and’ and the word ‘they’. This might suggest that the poet is
trying to write from the point of view of a child. On the other
hand, the structure of certain sentences is not that simple. For
instance, if one considers how the structure of the verse I
feared more than tigers their muscles like iron is inverted, it is
definitely not something that a child would write.

54. Who threw words like stones – a simile showing
that the words that the bullies used cause him as
much pain as if they were throwing stones at
him.

55. I feared more than tigers their muscles like iron – a simile and a
metaphor. The boys are being compared to tigers (metaphor).
At the same time, their muscles are compared to iron (simile)
suggesting their godlike strength.

56. I feared the salt coarse pointing of those boys – the word salt is a bit
ambiguous (NOT CLEAR). It could be referring to the
expression to put salt in a wound – hence, suggesting the
idea that they add insult to injury by pointing at him and
making fun of him behind his back.

57. Like dogs to bark at our world – another simile. This is a clear
reference to the distinction between the middle and the
working class. It shows how the rough boys are angry at the
middle class because they are deprived of all the fancy things
that this class can offer.