When I get a child,
I get him with fixed intent;
I don't get him by accident.
I get him because I am content with life,
Satisfied with myself,
And because I love my wife.
When the child is born,
I am full of scorn
At thought of other children.
By instinct I divine
There never was so fine a boy as mine.
I think this, because I am satisfied with life,
Conceited with myself,
And because I love my wife.
And I want to keep my son,
I want to finish what I have begun.
I CAN endure the blight of drought
And the black rigour of my wild,
But not the name of Beauty on his mouth
And not to see him with a child.
I WILL not love you for my duty,
Nor for all your treasure,
But I will love because of beauty,
And because of pleasure.
The boy that I shall bear will be a love-child.
Conceived in holy blindness,
I give him to the world who shall be reconciled
To loving-kindness.
Since I no longer love for duty,
Nor for all man's treasure,
And since I bear the child to Beauty
Because of pleasure.
I AM SO tired I cannot move,
I would sit still and love.
I carried souls so long in pain,
I too would be a child again.
Man who is not child to woman
Is either rogue or more than human. —
I rested once upon my father's strength:
O to find peace in love at length!
Man, are you strong to take my proffered hand,
And to be kind when you command?
There was a saint who carried children up a steep,
Make me your child, and let me sleep.
I know you are too dear to stay;
You are so exquisitely sweet:
My lonely house will thrill some day
To echoes of your eager feet.
I hold your words within my heart.
So few, so infinitely dear;
Watching your fluttering hands I start
At the corroding touch of fear.
A faint, unearthly music rings
From you to Heaven — it is not far!
A mist about your beauty clings
Like a thin cloud before a star.
My heart shall keep the child I knew.
When you are really gone from me.
And spend its life remembering you
As shells remember the lost sea.
There is a mirror in my room
Less like a mirror than a tomb,
There are so many ghosts that pass
Across the surface of the glass.
When in the morning I arise
With circles round my tired eyes,
Seeking the glass to brush my hair
My mother's mother meets me there.
If in the middle of the day
I happen to go by that way,
I see a smile I used to know —
My mother, twenty years ago.
But when I rise by candlelight
To feed my baby in the night,
Then whitely in the glass I see
My dead child's face look out at me.
Over the limp and sallow grasses,
Deborah, will you walk with me?
You may gather gentians in purple masses
And honeypods from the locust tree.
Brown leaves cover the partridge berry.
Holding it safe for your eager hand.
Barberry bright and cornelian cherry
Offering scarlet jewels stand.
I shall dress you up as an elf-queen, twining
Bittersweet wreaths for your golden head ;
Your leaf-brown cloak with its orange lining
I shall hang with garlands yellow and red.
Let us leave this place while the sunlight lingers
Lest the elves should covet your beauty bright.
The gentians fall from your tired fingers
As I carry you home through the fading light.
I would make you cookies
But you could not eat them ;
I would bring you roses
But you would not care.
In your scornful beauty,
Arrogant and patient,
Though I'd die to please you
You lie silent there.
Your once wanton sister
Creeps about on tiptoe,
And your brother hurries
At your slightest nod :
Watching at your bedside
When you sleep I tremble
Lest before you waken
You go back to God.
Kenton and Deborah, Michael and Rose,
These are fine children as all the world knows ;
But into my arms in my dreams every night
Come Peter and Christopher, Faith and Delight.
Kenton is tropical, Rose is pure white,
Deborah shines like a star in the night;
Michael's round eyes are as blue as the sea,
And nothing on earth could be dearer to me.
But where is the baby with Faith can compare?
What is the colour of Peterkin's hair?
Who can make Christopher clear to my sight,
Or show me the eyes of my daughter Delight?
When people inquire I always just state:
"I have four nice children and hope to have eight.
Though the first four are pretty and certain to please,
Who knows but the rest may be nicer than these?"
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice,--in it, and in my rhyme.
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.
"And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."
The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here!" said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."