"Nurse lifts high the Venice beaker,
Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold,
Scarce in time to 'scape the quicker
Little fingers over-bold,
Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the will of four years old.
X.
"Pretty wood bird, pecking, flitting,
Round the cherries on the tree.
Ware the scarecrow, grimly sitting,
Crouched for silly things, like thee!
Nurse hath plenty such in ambush. 'Touch not, for it burns,'[2] quoth
she.
XI.
"And thine eyes' blue mirror widens
With an awestroke of belief;
Meekly following that blind guidance,
On thy finger's rosy sheaf,
Blow'st thou softly, fancy wounded, soothing down a painless grief.
XII.
"Nurse and nursling, learner, teacher,
Thus foreshadow things to come,
When the girl shall grow the creature
Of false terrors vain and dumb,
And entrust their baleful fetish with her being's scope and sum.
XIII.
"Then her heart shall shrink and wither,
Custom-straitened like her waist,
All her thought to cower together,
Huddling sheep-like with the rest,
With the flock of soulless bodies on a pattern schooled and laced.