To a Child Dancing in the Wind

Dance there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water's roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind?

Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn'd? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered And dream that all the world's a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.