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| I LOOK upon thy happy face— | |
| Dear child with those undarkened eyes | |
| Like glimpses of transparent skies— | |
| And dream of things which have no place | |
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| In that small, golden head of thine; | 5 |
| Things that no ten-year-old has yet | |
| Dared in his roguish wit to set | |
| To thought, or word, or rhythmic line. | |
| |
| And it is better so, I think, | |
| Better the child should be a child, | 10 |
| That he should grow as glad and wild | |
| As flowers upon a river’s brink. | |
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| Laugh, then, and romp, and kiss the sun, | |
| And be as if this ancient earth | |
| Were but the resting-place of mirth | 15 |
| Since time was born and joy begun. | |
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| Laugh, and I ’ll be a child with thee, | |
| Forgetful of the days which fly, | |
| Forgetful of the nights which die, | |
| And sipping sweetness like the bee. | 20 |
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| For, oh! remember, little sir, | |
| Childhood is but a passing spring, | |
| Loath to await the burgeoning | |
| Of summer and its fiery stir.… | |
| |
| But no, my dreams will not be stilled; | 25 |
| I cannot turn the long years back, | |
| And life for me has ploughed its track; | |
| The man must be the man, as willed; | |
| |
| Not dreams, I warn thee, such as they, | |
| Our languid-hearted poets make, | 30 |
| Nor such as many love to wake | |
| From fable or the Grecian lay; | |
| |
| But dreams of an aspiring soul, | |
| That yearns with all its human might | |
| To steal the secrets of the night, | 35 |
| To reach some high millennial goal. | |
| |
| Here, at this hour, I view the sweep | |
| Of a vast century to its close, | |
| Sublime in its titanic throes, | |
| And in its plummet ocean-deep— | 40 |
| |
| A century thrilled from start to end | |
| With fearless striving, fearless hope, | |
| Whose larger mind and wider scope | |
| In one eternal progress tend.… | |
| |
| Yet thine will be the loftier tread, | 45 |
| And thine will be the swifter pace; | |
| When thou shalt be as I, the race | |
| Will scorn the marvels of the dead. | |
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| Ah, thou shalt look so clear, so far, | |
| That all I wonder at will seem | 50 |
| Like the first mistings of a dream | |
| Which dawns into a perfect star. | |
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