The connection between adulthood and childhood

Throughout the three poems, Half past two by U.A.Fanthorpe, Piano by D.H.Lawrence and Poem at Thirty Nine by Alice Walker, the themes of childhood and adulthood are put in relief. There is always a communication between the two worlds and an every day event or a sensory detail can suddenly make them connect.
The poem Half past Two expresses the innocence of childhood. Piano talks about the transforming power of music that makes the speaker remember about his childhood. Finally, Poem at Thirty-Nine explores the marks left by an adult on his child.

Ursula Askham Fanthorpe uses U.A. Fanthorpe as her writing name. She is born on the 22nd of July 1929 and died in the 28th of April 2009. She’s a british poet and won the awards of the “Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature” and the “Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry”; U.A.Fanthorpe wrote the poem Half past Two In this poem, the influence of time on children and adults is the main theme. A schoolboy is told he’s done something “Very Wrong” and gets punished until half past two. The boy hasn’t any notion of time and doesn’t know what half past two signifies “she hadn’t taught him Time” (v 8). Time seems to pass very slowly for him “and so he waited, beyond onceupona” (v 19) whereas it goes much to fast for adults. At the end of the poem, the teacher rushed into the room saying “ I forgot all about you Run along or you’ll be late” v 26-27. The child doesn’t know how to read the time ‘But he couldn’t click it’s language’.
In the 8th stanza, there is here a shift between the point of view of the child and the point of view of the speaker. The pace slows as if Time had suddenly stopped leaving the child to daydream. The smell of old chrysanthemums of her desk’ is a connotation to death. “Into the air outside into ever” expresses freedom. This shows that the room the child is in feels like a prison.
The theme of authority is also observed.