To be a poet,—(save the holy right

Love gives me to write poems at the sight

Of a young face whose eager brightness came

As part of life’s best gift to me,—) can frame

No fitter reason why in such delight

I hold the one sweet syllable, than this:

Not for its visions of the field or wood,

But for its wealth of possibilities;

Its hint of undefined, ideal good,

Suggesting all thy soul can scarcely miss,