Page:MU KPB 009 The Springtide of Life Poems of Childhood by Algernon Charles Swinburne.pdf/111

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The mists and the storms receding
At sight of you smile and die:
Your eyes held wide on me reading
Shed summer across the sky:
Your heart shines clear for me, heeding
No more of the world than I.

The world, what is it to you, dear,
And me, if its face be grey,
And the new-born year be a shrewd year
For flowers that the fierce winds fray?
You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;
You laugh, and the month turns May.

Love cares not for care, he has daffed her
Aside as a mate for guile:
The sight that my soul yearns after
Feeds full my sense for awhile;
Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,
Your good little glad grave smile.

Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;
Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;
Blake’s visions, that lighten and mutter;
Molière—and his smile has nought
Left on it of sorrow, to utter
The secret things of his thought.

No grim tiling written or graven
But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;
A lark’s note rings from the raven,
And tragedy’s robe turns white;
And shipwrecks drift into haven;
And darkness laughs, and is light.

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