TOYS ARE OUR JOYS

 

                               

 

                                                TOYS ARE OUR JOYS

 

 

            A toy is defined as ‘any object that is primarily used to provide entertainment, play, or amusement.’

 

            It is not only children who play with different kinds of toys according to their age and taste thereof. Adults also play with toys that amuse, entertain, and enlighten them.

 

            In fact human beings need toys to pass their time joyfully till the last moment of their life.  

 

            To punish children to play with toys for their physical and mental entertainment is sinful.  

 

            Given below is a poem “The Toys” written  by the English poet and literary critic Coventry Patmore (1823-1896). It uses  “a father’s moment of harshness toward his motherless young son to explore parental guilt, human flaw, and the boundless forgiving mercy of God.”

 

            Metaphorically,  “the toys synbolise  the petty, worldly distractions, status, and material pursuits that humans obsess over.” The text of the poem follows:  

                               

                                    The Toys

My  little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,

I struck him, and dismiss'd

With hard words and unkiss'd,       

—His Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet 

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach,

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells,

And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray'd

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,

Not vexing Thee in death, 

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

'I will be sorry for their childishness.'

                                    *******

G.R.Kanwal

11 October 2026