A CHILD'S HAIR

A letter from abroad. I tear

Its sheathing open, unaware

What treasure gleams within; and there —

Like bird from cage —

Flutters a curl of golden hair

Out of the page.

From such a frolic head‘ twas shorn!

(‘ Tis but five years since he was born. )

Not sunlight scampering over corn

Were merrier thing.

A child? A fragment of the morn,

A piece of Spring!

Surely an ampler, fuller day

Than drapes our English skies with grey —

A deeper light, a richer ray

Than here we know —

To this bright tress have given away

Their living glow.

For Willie dwells where gentian flowers

Make mimic sky in mountain bowers;

And vineyards steeped in ardent hours

Slope to the wave

Where storied Chillon's tragic towers

Their bases lave;

And over piny tracts of Vaud

The rose of eve steals up the snow;

And on the waters far below

Strange sails like wings

Half-bodilessly come and go,

Fantastic things;

And tender night falls like a sigh

On châlet low and château high;

And the far cataract's voice comes nigh,

Where no man hears;

And spectral peaks impale the sky

On silver spears.

Ah, Willie, whose dissevered tress

Lies in my hand!— may you possess

At least one sovereign happiness,

Ev'n to your grave;

One boon than which I ask naught less,

Naught greater crave:

May cloud and mountain, lake and vale,

Never to you be trite or stale

As unto souls whose wellsprings fail

Or flow defiled,

Till Nature's happiest fairy-tale

Charms not her child!

For when the spirit waxes numb,

Alien and strange these shows become,

And stricken with life's tedium

The streams run dry,

The choric spheres themselves are dumb,

And dead the sky,—

Dead as to captives grown supine,

Chained to their task in sightless mine:

Above, the bland day smiles benign,

Birds carol free,

In thunderous throes of life divine

Leaps the glad sea;

But they — their day and night are one.

What is't to them, that rivulets run,

Or what concern of theirs the sun?

It seems as though

Their business with these things was done

Ages ago:

Only, at times, each dulled heart feels

That somewhere, sealed with hopeless seals,

The unmeaning heaven about him reels,

And he lies hurled

Beyond the roar of all the wheels

Of all the world.

On what strange track one's fancies fare!

To eyeless night in sunless lair

‘ Tis a far cry from Willie's hair;

And here it lies —

Human, yet something which can ne'er

Grow sad and wise:

Which, when the head where late it lay

In life's grey dusk itself is grey,

And when the curfew of life's day

By death is tolled,

Shall forfeit not the auroral ray

And eastern gold.