The Cool Web Man and the Natural World Quotes

In the opening line of the poem, Graves points out that children—unlike adults—aren't able to talk; they're not able to put their experiences into words. As we find out later in this poem, Graves takes this to mean that experience strikes children with a lot more emotional force than it does adults.

In line 2, Graves continues to talk about how children aren't able to take what comes in through their senses and arrange their experience into something they can communicate to another person. In this case, we might think the smell of a rose is something pleasant. But for a child who doesn't really know what to do with their experience, the smell of a rose might be awful.

Unlike kids, we adults have speech and are able to talk about our experiences, sometimes in really descriptive ways (like Graves does with his poetry). And apparently, having the ability to speak helps us to "chill the angry day." We don't know why yet, but Graves claims that our ability to speak manages to make our harsh experiences less harsh.