He sees each beautiful stem, blue-green,
Standing alone in its grace,
Great pendulous poppies aflame between,
And little convolvulus climbing to screen
That dim forest world from his face.
He sees overhead as they dance to its tune
The ears flash white in the wind,
But that musical laugh before mid-noon
Ripples far and faint in the heat, and soon
Leaves silence only behind.
And the silence falls on his fresh young soul,
Like the far sound of the sea,
Infinite, solemn; its strange control
Possesses him quite; quick fancies roll
Through his brain; half fearfully
He looks; and the long path seems to strain
His tremulous lips apart;
Some sudden trouble his eyes sustain;
For so the folded blossom of pain
Has broke in his childish heart.
What is it?—some swift intuitive glance,
Half-shapen only in thought,
Of stranger worlds, of wide mischance?
Some intimate sense of severance
Or loss?—I know not what.
He turns and leaps; for his mother’s arms
Out of the doorway lean;
She folds him safely from all alarms,
And rallies his courage with rhythmical charms,—
Yet knows not what he has seen.
FOOTPATH.
Onward, where through dewy grass
Slowly wading footsteps pass;
Where the daisy’s peaceful eye
Gazes trustful to the sky;
Where the river rippling by
Makes scarce heeded harmony
With the deep bell’s distant chime,
And the wandering waifs of rhyme,
Flung at random from the mind,
While the thought still lags behind,
Held in check by idle musing
Born of chance, not wilful choosing.
Now, more clear on either side,
See the meadows green divide;
Clearer lies the path before us;
Varied sounds are floating o’er us;
All the stirring noise of life,
All the ceaseless daily strife;
The larger world breaks strongly in
Where footpaths end and roads begin.