Page:Barham Beach - a poem of regeneration.djvu/41

Vice, Death, Estrangement some ancestral strain
Shall haply breed anew, and burn and bite,
Curdling and whipping into froth the brain.
Yet I, perchance, Iago-like, may be
Too critical; our wretched planet shows
No picture after all, so fair to see
As this twined loveliness of bud and rose,
And even I must grant a thrill of joy
Wavers across my heart like mountain breeze
Merely to contemplate the sleeping boy
Eosily couched upon his mother s knees,
And that young mother in her beauty s flower,
An artist s idol, fancy-stellified,
E en such a being as the gods should dower
With all of earth s and heaven s good allied.
Yet such a pair do presuppose a third,
A child and mother form not a duet,
But mere component trio-parts, unheard,
Unknown, save when in triple sonance met,
Where then was he, the master and the king,
The chief musician, he should complete
The harmony, and make the pinewoods ring
Unto the trembling of their lutestrings sweet!
Why did the boy, half rousing in his sleep,
Soft iterate his father s name in vain!
Why did her face so work in anguish deep
That blood, not tears, had best expressed her pain?
Why did he linger! Sure he must have felt
Their need, and felt the luring golden day,-
Alas ! their king in cringing horror dwelt,
Shackled, dishonored, clad in felon s gray!