Page:MU KPB 009 The Springtide of Life Poems of Childhood by Algernon Charles Swinburne.pdf/131

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As a poor man hungering stands with insatiate eyes and hands
    Void of bread
Right in sight of men that feast while his famine with no least
    Crumb is fed,

Here across the garden-wall can I hear strange children call,
    Watch them play,
From the windowed seat above, whence the goodlier child I love
    Is away.

Here the sights we saw together moved his fancy like a feather
    To and fro,
Now to wonder, and thereafter to the sunny storm of laughter
    Loud and low—

Sights engraven on storied pages where man’s tale of seven swift ages
    All was told—
Seen of eyes yet bright from heaven—for the lips that laughed were seven
    Sweet years old.

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