There beats not in the heart of May, When summer hopes and springtide fears, There falls not from the height of day, When sunlight speaks and silence hears, So sweet a psalm as children play And sing, each hour of all their years, Each moment of their lovely way, And know not how it thrills our ears. VII Ah child, what are we, that our ears Should hear you singing on your way, Should have this happiness? The years Whose hurrying wings about us play Are not like yours, whose flower-time fears Nought worse than sunlit showers in May, Being sinless as the spring, that hears Her own heart praise her every day. VIII Yet we too triumph in the day That bare, to entrance our eyes and ears, To lighten daylight, and to play Such notes as darkness knows and fears, The child whose face illumes our way, Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears, Whose hand is as the hand of May To bring us flowers from eight full years. _February 4, 1882._ COMPARISONS Child, when they say that others Have been or are like you, Babes fit to be your brothers, Sweet human drops of dew, Bright fruit of mortal mothers, What should one say or do? We know the thought is treason, We feel the dream absurd; A claim rebuked of reason, That withers at a word: For never shone the season That bore so blithe a bird. Some smiles may seem as merry, Some glances gleam as wise, From lips as like a cherry And scarce less gracious eyes; Eyes browner than a berry, Lips red as morning's rise. But never yet rang laughter So sweet in gladdened ears Through wall and floor and rafter As all this household hears And rings response thereafter Till cloudiest weather clears. When those your chosen of all men, Whose honey never cloys, Two lights whose smiles enthrall men, Were called at your age boys, Those mighty men, while small men, Could make no merrier noise. Our Shakespeare, surely, daffed not More lightly pain aside From radiant lips that quaffed not Of forethought's tragic tide: Our Dickens, doubtless, laughed not More loud with life's first pride. The dawn were not more cheerless With neither light nor dew Than we without the fearless Clear laugh that thrills us through: If ever child stood peerless, Love knows that child is you. WHAT IS DEATH? Looking on a page where stood Graven of old on old-world wood Death, and by the grave's edge grim, Pale, the young man facing him, Asked my well-beloved of me Once what strange thing; this might be, Gaunt and great of limb.