Page:A midsummer holiday and other poems (IA midsummerholiday00swin).pdf/101

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NINE YEARS OLD.
89

Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild,
So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden,
So by love's lures blamelessly beguiled,
Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden
Yet by change that mars not yet the child.

IV.

Ah, not yet! Thou, lord of night and day,

Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure,
Time, false friend who tak'st thy gifts away,
Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure,
Leave us yet some rapture of delay,
Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure
Unprophetic of delight's decay,
Yet some nights and days wherein to measure
All the joys that bless us while they may.