Or are they timid only with emotion?
And pout their tiny lips up but for show,
O’er some new story of the heart’s devotion,
That thou art murmuring to the earth below?
Or, ravished from the grasp of Time and Distance,
Com’st thou with News, to gift, with sudden joy,
The sad heart with a sense of fresh existence —
Making the old man feel once more a boy?
Or bear’st thou words to soothe not, but to sunder?
Quietly rupturing the holiest ties —