Across what calm of tropic seas,
’Neath alien clusters of the nights,
Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!
The generations fostered them;
And steadfast Nature, secretwise—
Thou seedling child of that old stem—
Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.
Was it a century or two
This lovely darkness rose and set,
Occluded by grey eyes and blue,
And Nature feigning to forget?
Some grandam gave a hint of it—
So cherished was it in thy race,
So fine a treasure to transmit
In its perfection to thy face.
Some father to some mother’s breast
Entrusted it, unknowing. Time
Implied, or made it manifest,
Bequest of a forgotten clime.
Hereditary eyes! But this
Is single, singular, apart:—
New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss,
New-made thy errand to my heart.
THE TREASURE
Three times have I beheld
Fear leap in a babe’s face, and take his breath,
Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.
What is it justifies
This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
The terror in those eyes
When only eyes can speak—they are so young?
Not yet those eyes had wept.
What does fear cherish that it locks so well?
What fortress is thus kept?
Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?