"my parents kept me from children who were rough" (identify the poet/poem).


Stephen Spender

Rough

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

If feared more than tigers th.eit: musdes like iron
Their jerkirig 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.

They were lithe, they sprang out behind hedges
Like dogs to bark at my world. They threw mud
While I looked the other way, pretending to smile.
I longed to forgive them, but they never smiled.