The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children
Source: Letters of John Keats (1817-1820)
Topic
Family in this collection is the site of both the deepest obligations and the most reliable comedy. Confucius on fathers teaching duties and sons neglecting them is the foundational entry: family is the first school of ethics, and the lessons are the most often failed. Franklin on the unmanageable wife who began as an undutiful daughter is the cautionary proverb. Mother Teresa on love beginning in the home before going out to meet the world corrects the sequence: grand humanitarianism that neglects the people closest to you is a form of avoidance. The proverbs — blood-is-thicker-than-water, charity-begins-at-home — are the inherited wisdom that the philosophers tend to qualify but never quite replace. Osgood on babies being more trouble than you thought and more wonderful gives the collection its honest close: family surpasses both the fears and the expectations you bring to it.
The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children
The Child is Father of the Man;
All children, except one, grow up.