Didst Thou sometimes think of THERE,
And ask where all the angels were?
I should think that I would cry
For my house all made of sky;
I would look about the air,
And wonder where my angels were;
And at waking 'twould
distress me--
Not an angel there to dress me!
Hadst Thou ever any toys,
Like us little girls and boys?
And didst Thou play in Heaven with all
The angels that were not too tall,
With stars for marbles? Did the things
Play Can you see me? through their wings?
And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil
Thy robes, with playing on OUR soil?
How nice to have them always new
In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue!
Didst Thou kneel at night to pray,
And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way?
And did they tire sometimes, being young,
And make the prayer seem very long?
And dost Thou like it best, that we
Should join our hands to pray to Thee?
I used to think, before I knew,
The prayer not said unless we do.
And did Thy Mother at the night
Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right?
And didst Thou feel quite good in bed,
Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said?
Thou canst not have forgotten all
That it feels like to be small:
And Thou know'st I cannot pray
To Thee in my father's way--
When Thou wast so little, say,
Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?--
So, a little Child, come down
And hear a child's tongue like Thy own;
Take me by the hand and walk,
And listen to my baby-talk.
To Thy Father show my prayer
(He will look, Thou art so fair),
And say: 'O Father, I, Thy Son,
Bring the prayer of a little one.'
And He will smile, that children's tongue
Has not changed since Thou wast young!
A QUESTION.
O bird with heart of wassail,
That toss the Bacchic branch,
And slip your
shaken music,
An elfin avalanche;
Come tell me, O tell me,
My poet of the blue!
What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?--
Here's MY thought of you.
A small thing, a wee thing,
A brown fleck of nought;
With winging and singing
That who could have thought?
A small thing, a wee thing,
A brown amaze withal,
That fly a pitch more azure
Because you're so small.
Bird, I'm a small thing--
My angel descries;
With winging and singing
That who could surmise?
Ah, small things, ah, wee things,
Are the poets all,
Whose tour's the more azure
Because they're so small.
The angels hang watching
The tiny men-things:-
'The dear speck of flesh, see,
With such
daring wings!
'Come, tell us, O tell us,
Thou strange
mortality!
What's THY thought of us, Dear?--
Here's OUR thought of thee.'
'Alack! you tall angels,
I can't think so high!
I can't think what it feels like
Not to be I.'
Come tell me, O tell me,
My poet of the blue!
What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?--
Here's MY thought of you.
FIELD-FLOWER.
A Phantasy.
God took a fit of Paradise-wind,
A slip of coerule weather,
A thought as simple as Himself,
And ravelled them together.
Unto His eyes He held it there,
To teach it gazing debonair
With memory of what, perdie,
A God's young innocences were.
His fingers pushed it through the sod--
It came up redolent of God,
Garrulous of the eyes of God
To all the breezes near it;
Musical of the mouth of God
To all had eyes to hear it;
Mystical with the mirth of God,
That glow-like did ensphere it.
And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said;
'I'll tell the whole world one day!'
There was no
blossom half so glad,
Since sun of Christ's first Sunday.
A poet took a flaw of pain,
A hap of skiey pleasure,
A thought had in his
cradle lain,
And mingled them in measure.
That chrism he laid upon his eyes,
And lips, and heart, for euphrasies,
That he might see, feel, sing, perdie,
The simple things that are the wise.
Beside the flower he held his ways,
And leaned him to it gaze for gaze--
He took its meaning, gaze for gaze,
As baby looks on baby;
Its meaning passed into his gaze,
Native as meaning may be;
He rose with all his shining gaze
As children's eyes at play be.
And--'Babble! babble! babble!' said;
'I'll tell the whole world one day!'
There was no poet half so glad,
Since man grew God that Sunday.
THE CLOUD'S SWAN-SONG.
There is a parable in the pathless cloud,
There's
prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie,
The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud,
To cheer the weighted heart that mates the
seeing eye.
A
lonely man, oppressed with
lonely ills,
And all the glory fallen from my song,
Here do I walk among the windy hills,
The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue.
Like grey clouds one by one my songs upsoar
Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one
They loose their little rain, and are no more;
And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none.
For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things,
From all men's care, how
miserably apart!
Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?'
And
barren is my song, and
barren is my heart.
For who can work, unwitting his work's worth?
Better, meseems, to know the work for naught,
Turn my sick course back to the kindly earth,
And leave to ampler plumes the jetting tops of thought.
And visitations, that do often use,
Remote,
unhappy, inauspicious sense
Of doom, and poets widowed of their muse,
And what dark 'gan, dark ended, in me did commence.
I thought of spirit wronged by
mortal ills,
And my flesh rotting on my fate's dull stake;
And how self-scorn-ed they the
bounty fills
Of others, and the bread, even of their dearest, take.
I thought of Keats, that died in perfect time,
In predecease of his just-sickening song;
Of him that set, wrapt in his
radiant rhyme,
Sunlike in sea. Life longer had been life too long.
But I, exanimate of quick Poesy,--
O then, no more but even a soulless corse!
Nay, my Delight dies not; 'tis I should be
Her dead, a stringless harp on which she had no force.
Of my wild lot I thought; from place to place,
Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on;
Making in all my home, with pliant ways,
But, provident of change, putting forth root in none.
Now, with starved brain, sick body,
patience galled
With fardels even to wincing; from fair sky
Fell sudden little rain,
scarce to be called
A
shower, which of the
instant was gone
wholly by.
What cloud thus died I saw not; heaven was fair.
Methinks my angel plucked my locks: I bowed
My spirit, shamed; and looking in the air:-
'Even so,' I said, 'even so, my brother the good Cloud?'
It was a
pilgrim of the fields of air,
Its home was allwheres the wind left it rest,
And in a little forth again did fare,
And in all places was a stranger and a guest.
It harked all breaths of heaven, and did obey
With sweet peace their uncomprehended wills;
It knew the eyes of stars which made no stay,
And with the
thunder walked upon the
lonely hills.
And from the subject earth it seemed to scorn,
It drew the sustenance
whereby it grew
Perfect in bosom for the married Morn,
And of his life and light full as a maid kissed new.
Its also darkness of the face withdrawn,
And the long
waiting for the little light,
So long in life so little. Like a fawn
It fled with
tempest breathing hard at heel of flight;
And having known full East, did not disdain
To sit in shadow and oblivious cold,
Save what all loss doth of its loss retain,
And who hath held hath somewhat that he still must hold.
Right poet! who thy rightness to approve,
Having all liberty, didst keep all measure,
And with a
firmament for ranging, move