Page:Poems Cook.djvu/411

At last the Child was seen to pass
 With one, sweet, opening Rose,
And a blade of the white-streak'd Ribbon-grass:—
The beautiful things, in the gorgeous mass,
 That his untaught spirit chose.

He rambled on through another gay hour,
 With a young heart's revelling mirth;
But he still preserved the Grass and the Flower,
As though they form'd the richest dower
 That he could inherit from Earth.

Over the green hill he slowly crept,
 Guarding the rose from ill;
He loll'd on the bank of a meadow and slept,
Then he hunted a squirrel, but jealously kept
 The rose and the ribbon-leaf still.

He stroll'd to the sea-beach, bleak and bare;
 And climb'd to a jutting spot;
And the Child was wooing his idols there,
Nursing the Flower and Grass with care;
 All else in the world forgot.

A dense, dark cloud roll'd over the sky,
 Like a vast, triumphal car!
The Child look'd up as it thicken'd on high,
And watch'd its thundering storm-wheels fly
 Through the blue arch, fast and far.

He knelt with the trophies he held so dear,
 And his beaming head was bow'd;
As he murmur'd, with mingled trust and fear:
"I'll twine them together, and leave them here,
 For the God who made that cloud."

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