And grateful you for each; the mean, the rare To your frank childishness as welcome are. Tossing your naked limbs on the glad sod You know not you will be—perhaps are—a God! Yea, Child, who, than you all love, More Divine in Heav’n above! Ev’n when babyhood becomes boyhood, still Nature spreads her bounty in sheer good-will. Honey from the sturdy oak, like dew, drips; Briers press purple grapes on thirsting lips; And from unploughed fields are borne Yellow sheaves of beardless corn. But stifle human wants with plenty, lust Of unneighbourliness creeps from the dust. Merchants here and there about ocean roam, Snatching subsistence given free at home; Robbers build forts whence to spoil; Shares rend the protesting soil. Germs, mixed—crude, human restlessness—its need For peril and adventure—or rank greed, That had hid underground, from shame to break “God’s Truce,” and keep the wondrous Babe awake, Had been struggling to survive; The spell is lifted; they live. A fresh Argo will seek another Fleece; Sin of a second Paris murder peace; A new Achilles set streams in wroth flood Rushing to the sea red with Trojan blood. No more, Boy, know ye of it Than in brave tales poets writ. Of Earth, not of it, you move to and fro, A mystery; wherever you may go, Carrying a blessing! Your one main care To learn what Heroes, like your Father, are; What, Virtue;—revealed to them Who prize it ere priced a gem. Then, your eyes, a boy’s, that had closed at night On a garden-land bathed in crimson light, Open to find yourself of man’s estate, Named Dictator of a mad world by Fate;— Grasping no steel sword in hand; With no Armies to command. My vision is blurred. As from graves, a host, Chaos, rose, went back at dawn a ghost. But mortal may not, ev’n in sleep, behold Heaven at work Man’s being to remould. Enough to witness when Earth Has undergone its new birth; How without pruning hook, or drudging bull, The press ran wine, the granaries were full; And traders finding wares from foreign lands They had risked life to store, left on their hands, Gave up voyaging abroad; Let alone the Ocean road. Ah! Joy, the world ’twas given me to view! All that’s fair in the Old, kind in the New! How Nature, impelled by but one desire To grant her loved children all they require, Never tires to please them; still Paints the lily at their will, Varies the rainbow’s order, gilds the gold On Ebro’s banks, dyes the wool in the fold, Wooes by soft stratagems her nursling, Man, To feel motherliness in all her plan Of change for him, while she shows Her own bliss in a dog-rose!