Classic Poem

A little boy,
To be his parent's joy,
A tender three year old,
Close in a shapely fold,
Whose trusty eye,
Draws a great circle of new sky!

His eye is blue,
As loved Italia's heaven,
Or the mid-ocean hue,
And Mediterranean even,
Or the bright petal of a star-shaped flower,
Autumnal Aster, or the Gentian's dower,
Or the just god's cerulean hall,—
How shone this eye o'er us at all?

How smiled its birth,
O'er trifling Concord earth;
How is it here,
Shining blue above the bier
Of the dead autumn flower,
And in my November hour?

Thou little boy,
To be thy parent's joy!
Thou angel sent,
Angel eloquent,
To drill the close-grained moment,
How gaze our wondering eyes at thee;
One, whom the god has anchored
In a bare plain, from the clear sea
Of his creative pleasure,
Moored thee to measure
The fathoms of the sense,
In the hard present tense!

Child of the good divinity,
Child of one,
Who shines on me
Like a most friendly sun;
Child of the azure sky,
Who has outdone it in that eye,
That trellised window in unfathomed blue,
Child of the midworld sweet and true,
Child of the combing, crystal spheres,
Throned above this salt pool of tears,
Child of immortality!
Why hast thou come to cheat the Destiny?

By the sweet mouth,
Half parted in a smile,
And the fat cheek,
And upright figure,
And thy creamy voice so meek;
By all thou art,
By the pat beating of thy criss-cross heart,
How couldst thou light on this plain, homespun shore,
And not upon thy own aerial riding,
Fall down on earth where turbid sadly pour,
The old perpetual rivers of backsliding?

Since thou art fast
In our autumnal ball,
Of thistle and specked grass weave thee a nest;
Renounce if possible the mighty air-spanned Hall
Cups of imperial nectar,
Vases of transparent porphyry,
Amethystine rings of splendor,
Bright footstools of chalcedony!
The alabaster bed,
Where in the plume of Seraph sunk thy head,
To the full sounding organ of the sphero,
By the smooth, hyaline finger of thy peer,
So amorously played!

Catch the sack, examine it!
Here are prickly chestnuts
That tinkle when they fall,
And the meat of oily walnuts,
And a pitch-pine tall
In his scaly cone,
And a terrace with alders sown,
Along the fleet brook's grassy side,
Little child! down this, thou mayst glide.

In the sack's an oaken chip,
Be thy skiff no more,
Sedge-grass for thy whip,
And a fountain for the roar
Of the brazen chariot-wheel,
Buzzing at thy pinkish heel.

Fix a blue jay's scream
For the whistle of thy car,
Hear no costlier music in thy dream,
Than the tap of the hard-billed woodpecker,
And suck ambrosia from tipped columbine,
And out the red fox-grape crush a tart wine.

Be those blue eyes,
Thy only atmosphere,
For in them lies,
What is than earth, than Heaven more dear!