Too young

You were my wonders, you my Lars,
In darkling days my sun and stars,
And over you entranced I hung,
to know that I was young.
Gazing with still unsated bliss,
My fancies took some shape like this:
"I have my world, and so have you,
A tiny universe for two,

A bubble by the artist blown,
Scarcely more fragile than our own,
Where you have all a whale could wish,
Happy as Eden's primal fish.
Manna is dropt you thrice a day
From some kind heaven not far away,
And still you snatch its softening crumbs,
Nor, more than we, think whence it comes.
No toil seems yours but to explore
Your cloistered realm from shore to shore;
Sometimes you trace its limits round,
Sometimes its limpid depths you sound,
Or hover motionless midway,
Like gold-red clouds at set of day;
Erelong you whirl with sudden whim
Off to your globe's most distant rim,
Where, greatened by the watery lens,
Methinks no dragon of the fens
Flashed huger scales against the sky,
Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy,
And the one eye that meets my view,
Lidless and strangely largening, too,
Like that of conscience in the dark,
Seems to make me its single mark.
What a benignant lot is yours
That have an own All-out-of-doors,
No words to spell, no sums to do,
No Nepos and no parlyvoo!
How happy you without a thought
Of such cross things as Must and Ought,-
I too the happiest of boys

To see and share your golden joys!"

So thought the child, in simpler words,
Of you his finny flocks and herds;
Now, an old man, I bid you rise
To the fine sight behind the eyes,
And, lo, you float and flash again
In the dark cistern of my brain.
But o'er your visioned flames I brood
With other mien, in other mood;
You are no longer there to please,
But to stir argument, and tease
My thought with all the ghostly shapes
From which no moody man escapes.

Diminished creature, I no more
Find Fairyland beside my door,
But for each moment's pleasure pay
With the quart d'heure of Rabelais !

I watch you in your crystal sphere,
And wonder if you see and hear
Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide
Conjecture of the world outside;
In your pent lives, as we in ours,
Have you surmises dim of powers,
Of presences obscurely shown,
Of lives a riddle to your own,
Just on the senses' outer verge,
Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge,
Where we conspire our own deceit
Confederate in deft Fancy's feat,
And the fooled brain befools the eyes
With pageants woven of its own lies?
But are they lies? Why more than those
Phantoms that startle your repose,
Half seen, half heard, then flit away,
And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I
Know to be substance; tell me why
My visions, like those haunting you,
May not be as substantial too.
Alas, who ever answer heard
From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd!
Your consciousness I half divine,
But you are wholly deaf to mine.
Go, I dismiss you; ye have done
All that ye could; our silk is spun:
Dive back into the deep of dreams,
Where what is real is what seems!
Yet I shall fancy till my grave
Your lives to mine a lesson gave;
If lesson none, an image, then,
Impeaching self-conceit in men
Who put their confidence alone

In what they call the Seen and Known. How seen? How known? As through your glass

Our wavering apparitions pass
Perplexingly, then subtly wrought
To some quite other thing by thought.
Here shall my resolution be:
The shadow of the mystery
Is haply wholesomer for eyes
That cheat us to be overwise,
And I am happy in my right

To love God's darkness as His light.

Men shall say, "A lover of this fashion Such an icy mistress well beseems." Women say, "Could we deserve such passion,

We might be the marvel that he dreams."

ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM

UNSEEN Musician, thou art sure to please, For those same notes in happier days I heard

Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred

Yet now again for me delight the keys: Ah me, to strong illusions such as these What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird

Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word Levels, and 't is the soul that hears and sees !

Play on, dear girl, and many be the years Ere some gray haired survivor sit like

me

And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears Unto another who, beyond the sea

Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears

A music in this verse undreamed by thee!

VERSES

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882

It is of interest to know that the goddaughter was a child of Leslie Stephen.

IN good old times, which means, you know,
The time men wasted long ago,
And we must blame our brains or mood
If that we squander seems less good,
In those blest days when wish was act
And fancy dreamed itself to fact,
Godfathers used to fill with guineas
The cups they gave their pickaninnies,
Performing functions at the chrism
Not mentioned in the Catechism.
No millioner, poor I fill up
With wishes my more modest cup,
Though had I Amalthea's horn

It should be hers the newly born.
Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it
So brimming full she could n't blow it.
Wishes are n't horses: true, but still
There are worse roadsters than goodwill.
And so I wish my darling health,
And just to round my couplet, wealth,
With faith enough to bridge the chasm
"Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm,
And bear her o'er life's current vext
From this world to a better next,
Where the full glow of God puts out
Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt.
I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise,
What more can godfather devise?

But since there's room for countless wishes
In these old-fashioned posset dishes,
I'll wish her from my plenteous store
Of those commodities two more,

Her father's wit, veined through and through

With tenderness that Watts (but whew!
Celia 's aflame, I mean no stricture
On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture) —
I wish her next, and 't is the soul
Of all I've dropt into the bowl,
Her mother's beauty nay, but two
So fair at once would never do.
Then let her but the half possess,
Troy was besieged ten years for less.
Now if there's any truth in Darwin,
And we from what was, all we are win,
I simply wish the child to be
A sample of Heredity,
Enjoying to the full extent

Life's best, the Unearned Increment
Which Fate her Godfather to flout
Gave him in legacies of gout.
Thus, then, the cup is duly filled;
Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.

"A similar change is made in the ninth verse of the stanza, where simpleness' is substituted for steadfastness.' The change from

steadfast' to 'simple' was not made, probably through oversight, in the first verse of the second stanza. There is nothing to indicate what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen to complete the first verse of the third stanza. C. E. Ñ."

STRONG, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws

That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good; And when the Fates ally them with a cause That wallows in the sea-trough and seems

lost,

Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost,

Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands

They twist the cable shall the world hold fast

To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was

he

Who helped us in our need; the eternal law
That who can saddle Opportunity

Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw
May minish him in eyes that closely see,
Was verified in him: what need we say
Of one who made success where others
failed,

Who, with no light save that of common day,

Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed,

But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate

van

Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly

man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze

Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair With the beguiling light of vanished days; This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, Roughhewn, and scornful of æsthetic phrase;

Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams,

The Present's hard uncompromising light