And garden,—­they were bound and still. 
There’s not a sparrow or a wren,
There’s not a blade of autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend
And tides of life and increase lend;
And every chick of every bird,
And weed and rock-moss is preferred. 
O ostrich-like forgetfulness! 
O loss of larger in the less! 
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host
That loiters round the crystal coast,
Could stoop to heal that only child,
Nature’s sweet marvel undefiled,
And keep the blossom of the earth,
Which all her harvests were not worth? 
Not mine,—­I never called thee mine,
But Nature’s heir,—­if I repine,
And seeing rashly torn and moved
Not what I made, but what I loved,
Grow early old with grief that thou
Must to the wastes of Nature go,—­
’T is because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope. 
For flattering planets seemed to say
This child should ills of ages stay,
By wondrous tongue, and guided pen,
Bring the flown Muses back to men. 
Perchance not he but Nature ailed,
The world and not the infant failed. 
It was not ripe yet to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And, pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt. 
His beauty once their beauty tried;
They could not feed him, and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn,
To wait an aeon to be born. 
Ill day which made this beauty waste,
Plight broken, this high face defaced! 
Some went and came about the dead;
And some in books of solace read;
Some to their friends the tidings say;
Some went to write, some went to pray;
One tarried here, there hurried one;
But their heart abode with none. 
Covetous death bereaved us all,
To aggrandize one funeral. 
The eager fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me: 
For this losing is true dying;
This is lordly man’s down-lying,
This his slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.

O child of paradise,
Boy who made dear his father’s home,
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come,
I am too much bereft. 
The world dishonored thou hast left. 
O truth’s and nature’s costly lie! 
O trusted broken prophecy! 
O richest fortune sourly crossed! 
Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, ’Weepest thou? 
Worthier cause for passion wild
If I had not taken the child. 
And deemest thou as those who pore,
With aged eyes, short way before,—­
Think’st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost? 
Taught he not thee—­the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven’s numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?