Throughout time and history, literature has captured the thoughts and sentiments of many individuals while examining the nature of human condition. As such one branch of literature; poetry is valued as it explores the mystery of human emotions and other universal attributes of mankind that can be divergently appreciated by responders in spite of originating contexts. As a result I am able to value poetry such as Gwen Harwood's At Mornington and Father and Child which poetically treats the universal notion of innocence and the road to maturity allowing me to develop my own personal understanding that without the acknowledgement or even loss of ones initial innocence and naivety it is not possible to grow and understand. Harwood's Father and Child yields an examination of the extraordinary evolution from innocence to experience a universal issue that can be appreciated by individuals independent of their context. My personal understanding is that innocence must be acknowledged or as I understand from this particular poem even lost in order to grow and understand attributes of life. The persona is described through the juxtaposition of "wisp-haired  to "judge  an effective paradox which reveals her naivety and youth implying her lack of wisdom and intelligence. Her understanding of life and death is shaped by her pure innocence as she was a "child who believed death clean and final  however the phallic symbolism of the father's firearm encapsulates the persona's strong desire to understand this process in complete terms. Nonetheless the "first shot  turns this powerful weapon into a "fallen gun  as the persona becomes aware of the "obscene  nature of death shown through the dolorous alliteration combined with violent imagery of the "bundle of stuff that dropped and dribbled through loose straw tangling in bowels . It is then in Harwood's use of direct speech and imperative in the fathers words "end what you have begun