Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous;
Yet some days for love's sake, ere the bowers
Fade wherein his fair first years kept chorus
Night and day with Graces robed like hours,
Ere this worshipped childhood wane before us,
Change, and bring forth fruit--but no more flowers.


VII.

Love we may the thing that is to be,
Love we must; but how forego this olden
Joy, this flower of childish love, that we
Held more dear than aught of Time is holden--
Time, whose laugh is like as Death's to see--
Time, who heeds not aught of all beholden,
Heard, or touched in passing--flower or tree,
Tares or grain of leaden days or golden--
More than wind has heed of ships at sea?


VIII.

First the babe, a very rose of joy,
Sweet as hope's first note of jubilation,
Passes: then must growth and change destroy
Next the child, and mar the consecration
Hallowing yet, ere thought or sense annoy,
Childhood's yet half heavenlike habitation,
Bright as truth and frailer than a toy;