And after my next coming birth,
The new child's prayer will rise to Thee:
To hear again the sounds of Earth,
Its sights again to see.
With child's glad eyes to see once more
The visioned glories of the gloom,
With climbing suns, and starry store,
Ceiling my little room.
O call again the moons that glide
Behind old vapours sailing slow;
Lost sights of solemn skies that slide
O'er eyelids sunken low.
Show me the tides of dawning swell,
And lift the world's dim eastern eye,
And the dark tears that all night fell
With radiance glorify.
First I would see, oh, sore bereft!
My father's house, my childhood's home;
Where the wild snow-storms raved, and left
White mounds of frozen foam.
Till, going out one dewy morn,
A man was turning up the mould;
And in our hearts the spring was born,
Crept hither through the cold.
And with the glad year I would go,
The troops of daisies round my feet;
Flying the kite, or, in the glow
Of arching summer heat,
Outstretched in fear upon the bank,
Lest gazing up on awful space,
I should fall down into the blank
From off the round world's face.
And let my brothers be with me
To play our old games yet again;
And all should go as lovingly
As now that we are men.
If over Earth the shade of Death
Passed like a cloud's wide noiseless wing,
We'd tell a secret, in low breath:
"Mind, 'tis a dream of Spring.