IMMORTAL HOPE

  Summer hath too short a date
    Autumn enters, ah! how soon,
  Scattering with scornful hate
    All the flowers of June. 
  Nay say not so,
  Nothing here below
      But dies
      To rise
  Anew with rarer glow.

  Now, no skylarks singing soar
    Sunward, now, beneath the moon
  Love’s own nightingale no more
    Lifts her magic tune! 
  Nay, say not so,
  But awhile they go;
      Their strain
      Again
  All heaven shall overflow.

WE HAD A CHILD

  We had a child, a little Fairy Prince,
    Let loose from Elfland for our heart’s delight;
  Ah! was it yesterday or four years since
    He beamed upon our sight? 
  Four years—­and yet it seems but yesterday
    Since the blue wonder of his baby eyes. 
  Beneath their ebon-fringed canopies,
    Subdued us to his sway.

  Three years—­and yet but yestermorn it seems
    Since first upon his feet he swaying stood,
  Buoyed bravely up by memory’s magic dreams
    Of elfin hardihood. 
  He stood, the while that long-forgotten lore
    Lit all his lovely face with frolic glee;
    And then—­O marvel! to his mother’s knee
  Walked the wide nursery floor.

  Two years gone by—­ah, no! but yesterday
    Our bright-eyed nursling, swift as we could teach,
  Forsook the low soft croonings of the fay
    For broken human speech—­
  Broken, yet to our ears divinelier broken
    Than sweetest snatches from Heaven’s mounting bird—­
    More eloquent than the poet’s passionate word
  Supremely sung or spoken.

  But O, our darling in his joyful dance
    Tottered death-pale beneath the withering north,
  Into a kinder clime, most blessed chance,
    We caught him swiftly forth,
  And there he bloomed again, our fairy boy,
    Two year-long Aprils through in sun and shower,
    Wing-footed Mercury of each merry hour,
  The Genius of our joy.

  And evermore we shared his shifting mood
    Of hide-and-seek with April joy and sorrow,
  Till not one shadow of solicitude
    Remained to mar our morrow;
  Yea, every fear had flown, lest, welladay! 
    The headlong heats or winter’s piercing power
    Should light afresh upon our radiant flower
  And wither him away.

* * * * *

  We had a child, a little fairy child,
    He kissed us on the lips but yesternight,
  Yet when he wakened his blue eyes were wild
    With fevered light. 
  We had a child—­what countless ages since,
    Did he go forth from us with wildered brain,
    Will he come back and kiss us once again—­
  Our little Fairy Prince?

BY THE BEDSIDE OF A SICK CHILD