By A Child's Bed

She breathèd deep,

  And stepped from out life's stream

Upon the shore of sleep;

And parted from the earthly noise,

Leaving her world of toys,

To dwell a little in a dell of dream.

Then brooding on the love I hold so free,

  My fond possessions come to be

Clouded with grief;

These fairy kisses,

This archness innocent,

Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content:

I think of what my portion might have been;

A dearth of blisses,

A famine of delights,

If I had never had what now I value most;

Till all I have seems something I have lost;

A desert underneath the garden shows,

And in a mound of cinders roots the rose.

Here then I linger by the little bed,

  Till all my spirit's sphere,

Grows one half brightness and the other dead,

One half all joy, the other vague alarms;

And, holding each the other half in fee,

Floats like the growing moon

That bears implicitly

Her lessening pearl of shadow

Clasped in the crescent silver of her arms.