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Six Years Old
O THOU whose fancies from afar are brought; | |
| Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, | |
| And fittest to unutterable thought | |
| The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol, | |
| Thou fairy voyager! that dost float | 5 |
| In such clear water, that thy boat | |
| May rather seem | |
| To brood on air than on an earthly stream— | |
| Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, | |
| Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; | 10 |
| O blessèd vision! happy child! | |
| Thou art so exquisitely wild, | |
| I think of thee with many fears | |
| For what may be thy lot in future years. | |
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| I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, | 15 |
| Lord of thy house and hospitality; | |
| And Grief, uneasy lover, never rest | |
| But when she sat within the touch of thee. | |
| O too industrious folly! | |
| O vain and causeless melancholy! | 20 |
| Nature will either end thee quite; | |
| Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, | |
| Preserve for thee, by individual right, | |
| A young lamb’s heart among the full-grown flocks. | |
| What hast thou to do with sorrow, | 25 |
| Or the injuries of to-morrow? | |
| Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth, | |
| Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks, | |
| Or to be trailed along the soiling earth; | |
| A gem that glitters while it lives, | 30 |
| And no forewarning gives, | |
| But, at the touch of wrongs, without a strife, | |
| Slips in a moment out of life. | |
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