DEDICATION

What can a wanderer bring

To little ones loved like you?

You have songs of your own to sing

That are far more steadfast and true,

Crumbs of pity for birds

That flit o'er your sun-swept lawn,

Songs that are dearer than all our words

With a love that is clear as the dawn.

What should a dreamer devise,

In the depths of his wayward will,

To deepen the gleam of your eyes

Who can dance with the Sun-child still?

Yet you glanced on his lonely way,

You cheered him in dream and deed,

And his heart is o'erflowing, o'erflowing to-day

With a love that — you never will need.

What can a pilgrim teach

To dwellers in fairy-land?

Truth that excels all speech

You murmur and understand!

All he can sing you he brings;

But — one thing more if he may,

One thing more that the King of Kings

Will take from the child on the way.

Yet how can a child of the night

Brighten the light of the sun?

How can he add a delight

To the dances that never are done?

Ah, what if he struggles to turn

Once more to the sweet old skies

With praise and praise, from the fetters that burn,

To the God that brightened your eyes?

Yes; he is weak, he will fail,

Yet, what if, in sorrows apart,

One thing, one should avail,

The cry of a grateful heart;

It has wings: they return through the night

To a sky where the light lives yet,

To the clouds that kneel on his mountain-height

And the path that his feet forget.

What if he struggles and still

Fails and struggles again?

What if his broken will

Whispers the struggle is vain?

Once at least he has risen

Because he remembered your eyes;

Once they have brought to his earthly prison

The passion of Paradise.

Kind little eyes that I love,

Eyes forgetful of mine,

In a dream I am bending above

Your sleep, and you open and shine;

And I know as my own grow blind

With a lonely prayer for your sake,

He will hear — even me — little eyes that were kind,

God bless you, asleep or awake.