The speaker in the poem is a schoolboy who is pleading with parents not to force **** to spend their childhood in the rigid environment of a school. The speaker uses three inter-related images – the schoolboy, the bird and the plant to symbolically express the predicament of those **** who spend their childhood in the confines of a school much against their will.
Using the metaphor of the seasons, the boy tries to convince parents that there is an intimate and sequential connection between the seasons and if they miss a season completely or do not enjoy the joys of a season they cannot face or enjoy the next season willingly. Here, the speaker uses the analogy of the (plant) buds to express his ideas. ‘Buds’ which normally appear in the spring season, develop into flowers enjoying the pleasant weather – fresh air, warm sunshine and plenty of open space to expand. Thus the pleasant weather of early summer is essential for the growth and development of buds.
In a similar way, **** are like the buds of spring who love the joys of summer – birds’ singing, the skylark’ company and the huntsman blowing his . But, this feeling of paradise is taken away when they are sent to school where they spend the whole day. They no longer hear the birds singing and sit drooping like a bird in a cage under the watchful eyes of the teacher. Thus forcing the **** to go to school in spring is like ‘nipping’ the buds in their infancy and blowing the blossoms away. If *** are stripped of their joy in spring, they cannot grow and mature into fruits in summer.
Metaphorically it means that if a man’* childhood were not spent happily, he will have problems of moving onto the next stage of life. There were no ‘blossoms’ in spring, so logically there will be
no ‘fruits’ to harvest in summer. There is also the suggestion that once the ‘blasts of winter’ come they will not be able to bear up against them. This means to say that as we get older, life throws painful things at us and if we have been abused in our childhood then we will not have the strength to withstand those painful experiences.
