Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/236

      I have lost the sound child-sleeping
      Which the thunder could not break;
      Something too of the strong leaping
      Of the staglike heart awake,
Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought to take.

      Some respect to social fictions
      Hath been also lost by me;
      And some generous genuflections,
      Which my spirit offered free
To the pleasant old conventions of our false Humanity.

      All my losses did I tell you,
      Ye, perchance, would look away,—
      Ye would answer me, "Farewell! you
      Make sad company to-day;
And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words you say."

      For God placed me like a dial
      In the open ground, with power;
      And my heart had for its trial,
      All the. sun and all the shower!
And I suffered many losses; and my first was of the bower.

      Laugh ye 1 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!

      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.