Sense with keenest edge unused, Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire; Lovely feet as yet unbruised On the ways of dark desire; Sweetest hope that lookest smiling O'er the wilderness defiling! Why such beauty, to be blighted By the swarm of foul destruction? Why such innocence delighted, When sin stalks to thy seduction? All the litanies e'er chaunted Shall not keep thy faith undaunted. . . . . . . Me too once unthinking Nature, --Whence Love's timeless mockery took me,-- Fashion'd so divine a creature, Yea, and like a beast forsook me. I forgave, but tell the measure Of her crime in thee, my treasure. The father is suffering the great pain of fathers when he speaks thus, the pain of fearing for the future of his child; and the mystery of things oppresses him, as it oppresses everybody who knows what it is to be afraid for the sake of another. He wonders at the beautiful fresh senses of the boy, "yet unsteeled by scathing fire"--that is, not yet hardened by experience of pain. He admires the beauty of the little feet tottering happily about; but in the same moment dark thoughts come to him, for he remembers how blood-stained those little feet must yet become on the ways of the world, in the streets of cities, in the struggle of life. And he delights in the smile of the child, full of hope that knows nothing of the great foul wilderness of the world, in which envy and malice and passions of many kinds make it difficult to remain either good or hopeful. And he asks, "Why should a child be made so beautiful, only to lose that beauty at a later day, through sickness and grief and pain of a thousand kinds? Why should a child come into the world so charmingly innocent and joyful, only to lose that innocence and happiness later on through the encountering of passion and temptation? Why should a child believe so deeply in the gods and in human nature? Later on, no matter how much he grieves, the time will come when that faith in the powers unseen must be sadly warped." And lastly the father remembers his own childhood, thinking, "I too was once a divine little creature like that. Love, the eternal illusion, brought me into the world, and Nature made me as innocent and trustful as this little boy. Later on, however, the same Nature abandoned me, like the animal that forsakes her young as soon as they grow a little strong. I forgave Nature for that abandonment," the father says, turning to the child, "but it is only when I look at you, my treasure, that I understand how much I lost with the vanishing of my own childhood." Nobody in the whole range of English literature has written anything more tender than that. It is out of the poet's heart.