She was eight years old that day,
Full of laughter and play;
Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—
Two young lovers were they.
And when the clouds like folded sheep
Were drowsing over the drowsy deep,
And like a rose in a golden cradle
Anwyl breathed on the breast of sleep,
Or ever the petals and leaves were furled
At the vesper-song of the sunset-world,
The sleepy young rose of nine sweet summers
Dreamed in his rose-bed cosily curled.
And what if the light of his nine bright years
Glistened with laughter or glimmered with tears,
Or gleamed like a mystic globe around him
White as the light of the sphere of spheres?
And what if a glory of angels there,
Starring an orb of ineffable air,
Came floating down from the Gates of jasper
That melt into flowers at a maiden's prayer?
And what if he dreamed of a fairy face
Wondering out of some happy place,
Quietly as a star at sunset
Shines in the rosy dreams of space?
For only as far as the west wind blows
The sweets of a swinging full-blown rose,
Eight years old and queen of the lilies
Little Etain slept—ah, how close!
At a flower-cry over the moonlit lane
In a cottage of roses dreamed Etain,
And their purple shadows kissed at her lattice
And dappled her sigh-soft counterpane;
And or ever Etain with her golden head
Had nestled to sleep in her lily-white bed,
She breathed a dream to her fairy lover,
Please, God, bless Anwyl and me, she said.
And a song arose in the rose-white West,
And a whisper of wings o'er the sea's bright breast,
And a cry where the moon's old miracle wakened
A glory of pearl o'er the pine-forest.