LXVI. For God placed me like a dial All the sun and all the shower: And I suffered many losses, and my first was of the bower. LXVII. Laugh you? If that loss of mine be Of no heavy-seeming weight— When the cone falls from the pine-tree, The young children laugh thereat; Yet the wind that struck it, riseth, and the tempest shall be great. LXVIII. One who knew me in my childhood In the glamour and the game, Looking on me long and mild, would Never know me for the same. Come, unchanging recollections, where those changes overcame ! LXIX. By this couch I weakly lie on, While I count my memories, Through the fingers which, still sighing, I press closely on mine eyes, Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I behold the bower arise. LXX. Springs the linden-tree as greenly, Each in either entertwined; And the rose-trees at the doorway, they have neither grown nor pined. LXXI. From those overblown faint roses Not a leaf appeareth shed, And that little bud discloses Not a thorn's-breadth more of red For the winters and the summers which have passed me overhead. LXXII. And that music overfloweth, Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves: Thrush or nightingale-who knoweth ? Fay or Faunus-who believes? But my heart still trembles in me to the trembling of the leaves. LXXIII. Is the bower lost, then? who sayeth That the bower indeed is lost? Hark! my spirit in it prayeth Through the sunshine and the frost, And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermost. LXXIV. Till another open for me In God's Eden-land unknown, White with gazing at His Throne; And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing—“ All is lost... and won!' THEY bid me sing to thee, Thou golden-haired and silver-voiced childWith lips by no worse sigh than sleep's defiledWith eyes unknowing how tears dim the sight, And feet all trembling at the new delight Treaders of earth to be! II. Ah no! the lark may bring A song to thee from out the morning cloud, The brisk rain from the trees, the lucky wind III. How could I think it right, New-comer on our earth as, Sweet, thou art, And cross with such amount of weary years IV. Even if the verse were said, Thou, who wouldst clap thy tiny hands to hear V. Therefore no song of mine,— But prayer in place of singing; prayer that would VI. So wilt thou aye be young, In lovelier childhood than thy shining brow |