The heir of Rookwood.
227
Told how the infant at her baptism
Made the old chapel ring with saucy laughter,
While that which answered from the niches dim,
Was wilder than an echo. Be it so.
She was Christ's child, signed with His holy cross,
On brow and breast.
It was my fanciful thought
To call her Lilia; she whom we had plucked
Out of the lily leaves.
Oh pleasant times!
Only a patron's golden alms, at first,
I gave my pensioner, in boyish pride
Masking my heart; but as the child grew strong,
The little seed of tenderness that lay
Hid in my bosom, thrust into the light
The embryo of a tree with buds and blooms
Shut in its folded being.
Infancy
Lay like a wreath of spring flowers on her brow;
But the rude breast whereon I grafted her,
Shot through the pale veins of my elfin charge
Its own abounding life. 'Twas I who trained
Made the old chapel ring with saucy laughter,
While that which answered from the niches dim,
Was wilder than an echo. Be it so.
She was Christ's child, signed with His holy cross,
On brow and breast.
It was my fanciful thought
To call her Lilia; she whom we had plucked
Out of the lily leaves.
Oh pleasant times!
Only a patron's golden alms, at first,
I gave my pensioner, in boyish pride
Masking my heart; but as the child grew strong,
The little seed of tenderness that lay
Hid in my bosom, thrust into the light
The embryo of a tree with buds and blooms
Shut in its folded being.
Infancy
Lay like a wreath of spring flowers on her brow;
But the rude breast whereon I grafted her,
Shot through the pale veins of my elfin charge
Its own abounding life. 'Twas I who trained
