| |
| COME, when no graver cares employ, | |
| Godfather, come and see your boy: | |
| Your presence will be sun in winter, | |
| Making the little one leap for joy. | |
| |
| For, being of that honest few, | 5 |
| Who give the Fiend himself his due, | |
| Should eighty thousand college-councils | |
| Thunder ‘Anathema,’ friend, at you; | |
| |
| Should all our churchmen foam in spite | |
| At you, so careful of the right, | 10 |
| Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome | |
| (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight; | |
| |
| Where, far from noise and smoke of town, | |
| I watch the twilight falling brown | |
| All round a careless-ordered garden | 15 |
| Close to the ridge of a noble down. | |
| |
| You ’ll have no scandal while you dine, | |
| But honest talk and wholesome wine, | |
| And only hear the magpie gossip | |
| Garrulous under a roof of pine: | 20 |
| |
| For groves of pine on either hand, | |
| To break the blast of winter, stand; | |
| And further on, the hoary Channel | |
| Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand; | |
| |
| Where, if below the milky steep | 25 |
| Some ship of battle slowly creep, | |
| And on through zones of light and shadow | |
| Glimmer away to the lonely deep, | |
| |
| We might discuss the Northern sin | |
| Which made a selfish war begin; | 30 |
| Dispute the claims, arrange the chances; | |
| Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win: | |
| |
| Or whether war’s avenging rod | |
| Shall lash all Europe into blood; | |
| Till you should turn to dearer matters, | 35 |
| Dear to the man that is dear to God; | |
| |
| How best to help the slender store, | |
| How mend the dwellings, of the poor; | |
| How gain in life, as life advances, | |
| Valor and charity more and more. | 40 |
| |
| Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet | |
| Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet; | |
| But when the wreath of March has blossomed, | |
| Crocus, anemone, violet, | |
| |
| Or later, pay one visit here, | 45 |
| For those are few we hold as dear; | |
| Nor pay but one, but come for many, | |
| Many and many a happy year. | |
| |
