A Child’s Imagination lays bare the feelings and emotions of Sri Aurobindo here in this poem as and when he sits to paint childish imagination with his poetic brush and colors. The mind of a child is ever simple. The heart of a child one cannot feel it if one’s heart is not pure. The title is apt and clear and is quite suggestive of as the poet has tried to delve deep into the child’s heart and imagination. 

While reading the poem, we get reminded of Surdas, Blake, Vaughan, Masefield, Hood and so on. The present poem is a glaring example of child literature. What is more important here is the sense of awe and wonder with which one sees it, feels it! Without feeling Blakian innocence, one may not delve and dabble into a child’s world.

Auroindo says that the child is an image of God and it has been created as per the Wish of the Almighty. A childish heart often remains full of innocence in an undefiled way. The child is God, a glimpse of the Divine. Into the mirror of the heart, its image can be felt. The child is innocent and pure. His golden image is a miniature in bliss. How sweet the image is! How sweet the voice! How does he stammer? Every word deserves a kiss. Is it not?

We cannot fathom a child’s mind and heart if our hearts and minds are not so pure. We grown-ups are not pure of heart and feeling. We are so intrigued and conceited, so full of deceit and treachery. If this be, how can we see God? A child’s fancies it is difficult to fathom them. Without being pure, how can purity be felt?

Times and situations change and shift from time to time. What was calm and tranquil may look it solemn and grave. The whole world is a playfield of His, the Vishwalila that know we not? He sees His Image in a child. But with experience innocence too transforms it. The holy child too will have to grow as this is the rule to Nature.

God loves you as you have the blessing of God, but even if grow up, forget you not what you have loved to repose in as that is your inner power and strength. In the child’s play is the Play of God; in the child’s imagination is the Imagination of God. In the Heart of hearts seated is God; in the Soul of the souls is God. But the child too will undergo changes as this is the law of Nature. Experience too teaches which is also a part of life as we keep growing.

With the change in time, shift in scenery, the things shift from the heart to the arbor of Nature. It is God who had made innocence as well as experience.

The arbor of Nature draws the young hearts for a loving dream which is but a shift in the paradigm.

The poet means to say that in God’s Heart is the heart of the child; in God’s Soul is the soul of the child, an indivisible part of the same.

O thou golden image,
            Miniature of bliss,    
Speaking sweetly, speaking meetly!
            Every word deserves a kiss.    

Strange, remote and splendid
            Childhood's fancy pure    
Thrills to thoughts we cannot fathom,
            Quick felicities obscure.    

When the eyes grow solemn
            Laughter fades away,    
Nature of her mighty childhood
            Recollects the Titan play;    

Woodlands touched by sunlight
            Where the elves abode,    
Giant meetings, Titan greetings,
            Fancies of a youthful God.    

These are coming on thee
            In thy secret thought;    
God remembers in thy bosom
            All the wonders that He wrought.