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I ask no glory's vagrant blaze,
To dance around my shining head:
Be peace and hope my crown instead,
With love, God willing, for my praise!
TO AN IDIOT CHILD.
Sweet Child! what light is in those eyes?
Like islands bright in sunset skies,
Ablaze with glory overweening
Yet cold—alive, yet dead of meaning!
Two goats upon the rocks at play
Not wilder as they climb and leap;
Yet torpid in their sense are they
As awful mountain lakes that sleep
Far deepening downward from the day,
To caves a thousand fathoms deep!
Child of love, what hath become
Of thy sweet tongue?—would it were dumb!
—That now doth boisterously climb
Along the fragmentary rhyme,
Years back within thine infant ear
Lodged lightly—thus to re-appear,
