A parent watches a child grow up in just one year, and the change is both sweet and quietly devastating. At two, Deborah was all joyful motion — she danced like a buttercup, her gold hair a “ruffled crest,” her voice spilling out like a fountain. The speaker fills those lines with light and music, capturing a spirit that’s unselfconscious and free. By three, that energy has been replaced by something more careful. She walks like a primrose now, her hair is just “yellow” instead of gleaming gilt, and her voice has lost its natural lilt. The wild, inventive child now moves with “quaint precision.” The final couplet lands like a soft sigh: at three, she “knows so much that she did not know.” That new knowledge — social graces, self-control — comes at the cost of her untamed spark. The mood is tender and heart-tugging, full of love for the little girl and a keen awareness that growing up often means losing something incandescent.
Experience — Summary
Deborah danced, when she was two, As buttercups and daffodils do ; Spirited, frail, naively bold, Her hair a ruffled crest of gold. And whenever she spoke her voice went singing Like water up from a fountain springing.
But now her step is quiet and slow; She walks the way primroses go; Her hair is yellow instead of gilt. Her voice is losing its lovely lilt, And in place of her wild, delightful ways A quaint precision rules her days.
For Deborah now is three, and oh. She knows so much that she did not know.