Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/238

A Child Asleep.

    How he sleepeth! having drunken
     Weary childhood's mandragore,
    From his pretty eyes have sunken
     Pleasures, to make room for more—
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.

    Nosegays! leave them for the waking!
     Throw them earthward where they grew.
    Dim are such, beside the breaking
     Amaranths he looks unto—
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

    Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
     From the palms they sprang beneath,
    Now perhaps divinely holden,
     Swing against him in a wreath—
We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

    Vision unto vision calleth,
     While the young child dreameth on.
    Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth
     With the glory thou hast won!
Darker wert thou in the garden, yestermorn, by summer-sun.

    We should see the spirits ringing
     Round thee,—were the clouds away!
    'Tis the child-heart draws them, singing
     In the silent-seeming clay—
Singing?—Stars that seem the mutest, go in music all the way.

    As the moths around a taper,
     As the bees around a rose,
    As in sunset, many a vapour,
     So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.