of the animals wore
     A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware
     Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap. 
     In a dingle away from a rutted highroad,
     Around him the earliest throstle and merle,
     Our human smile between milk and sleep,
     Effervescent of Nature he crowed. 
     Fair was that season; furl over furl
     The banners of blossom; a dancing floor
     This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair
     Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast: 
     Careless, a centre of vigilant care. 
     Thy mother kisses an infant curl. 
     The room of the toys was a boundless nest,
     A kingdom the field of the games,
     Till entered the craving for more,
     And the worshipped small body had aims. 
     A good little idol, as records attest,
     When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream
     By sweets and caresses:  he gave but sign
     That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race,
     Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine. 
     Almost magician, his earliest dream
     Was lord of the unpossessed
     For a look; himself and his chase,
     As on puffs of a wind at whirl,
     Made one in the wink of a gleam. 
     She kisses a locket curl,
     She conjures to vision a cherub face,
     When her butterfly counted his day
     All meadow and flowers, mishap
     Derided, and taken for play
     The fling of an urchin’s cap. 
     When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born,
     For preying too heedlessly bred,
     What a heart clapped in thee then! 
     With what fuller colours of morn! 
     And high to the uttermost heavens it flew,
     Swift as on poet’s pen. 
     It flew to be wedded, to wed
     The mystery scented around: 
     Issue of flower and dew,
     Issue of light and sound: 
     Thinner than either; a thread
     Spun of the dream they threw
     To kindle, allure, evade. 
     It ran the sea-wave, the garden’s dance,
     To the forest’s dark heart down a dappled glade;
     Led on by a perishing glance,
     By a twinkle’s eternal waylaid. 
     Woman, the name was, when she took form;
     Sheaf of the wonders of life.  She fled,
     Close imaged; she neared, far seen.  How she made
     Palpitate earth of the living and dead! 
     Did she not show thee the world designed
     Solely for loveliness?  Nested warm,
     The day was the morrow in flight.  And for thee,
     She muted the discords, tuned, refined;
     Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak. 
     Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree,
     Sliding on radiance, winging from shade,
     With her witch-whisper o’er ruins, in reeds,
     She sang low the song of her promise delayed;
     Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke
     Astream over woodland.  And was not she