When I am near you, I am like a child,
I'm still and simple, I am undefiled.
I speak my love in a forgotten tongue.
And use the words I knew when I was young.
My Love! You have restored me in a hundred ways.
You gave me back my happy childish days.
Michael walks in autumn leaves
Rustling leaves and fading grasses,
And his little music-box
Tinkles faintly as he passes.
It's a gay and jaunty tune
If the hands that play were clever:
Michael plays it like a dirge,
Moaning on and on forever.
While his happy eyes grow big,
Big and innocent and soulful.
Wistful, halting little notes
Rise, unutterably doleful,
Telling of all childish griefs —
Baffled babies sob forsaken,
Birds fly off and bubbles burst,
Kittens sleep and will not waken.
Michael, come in! Stop crying at the door.
Come in and see the evil you have done.
Here is your sister's doll with one leg gone,
Naked and helpless on the playroom floor.
"Poor child ! poor child ! now he can never stand.
With one leg less he could not even sit!"
She mourned, but first, with swift avenging hand,
She smote, and I am proud of her for it.
Michael, my sympathies are all for you.
Your cherub mouth, your miserable eyes.
Your grey-blue smock tear-spattered and your cries
Shatter my heart, but "what am I to do"?
He was her baby and the fear of bears
Lay heavy on him so he could not sleep
But in the crook of her dear arm, she swears.
So, Michael, she was right and you must weep.
Over the green and level land
My sad eyes wander without hope ;
Here no rejoicing mountains stand,
No strong and friendly slope.
But ever when I close my eyes
Tall mountains rear their stately forms.
Against the sky I watch them rise,
Serene in calm or storms.
One in the distance rises blue,
Haloed by morning's earliest beams.
This was the peak my childhood knew.
About her clung my dreams.
Over her pallor fell the snow,
The hot sun scorched her fertile breast.
But in the summer lightning's glow
I always loved her best.
Deborah danced, when she was two,
As buttercups and daffodils do ;
Spirited, frail, naively bold,
Her hair a ruffled crest of gold.
And whenever she spoke her voice went singing
Like water up from a fountain springing.
But now her step is quiet and slow;
She walks the way primroses go;
Her hair is yellow instead of gilt.
Her voice is losing its lovely lilt,
And in place of her wild, delightful ways
A quaint precision rules her days.
For Deborah now is three, and oh.
She knows so much that she did not know.
I went back to a place I knew
When I was very, very small ;
The same old yellow roses grew
Against the same old wall.
Each thing I knew was in its place;
The well, the white stones by the road,
The box-hedge with its cobweb lace,
And a small spotted toad.
And yet the place seemed changed and still ;
The house itself had shrunk, I know.
And then my eyes began to fill —
For I had always loved it so !
"I have no name;
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!
When voices of children are heard on the green,
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around
To the bells' cheerful sound;
While our sports shall be seen
On the echoing Green.
Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say,
I love to rise on a summer morn,
When birds are singing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
Oh what sweet company!
But to go to school in a summer morn,--
Oh it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!--
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and let them all free;
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,--
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their son does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are filled with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.
For where'er the sun does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall,
Babes should never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.