Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far, Once--in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant -Forlorn, and faint, and stark, I had endured through watches of the dark The abashless inquisition of each star, Yea, was the outcast mark Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny;Stood bound and helplessly For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me;Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour In night's slow-wheeled car;Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, I waited the inevitable last.
Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering.
She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! -And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live:
Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.
Therefore I kissed in thee The heart of Childhood, so divine for me;And her, through what sore ways, And what unchildish days, Borne from me now, as then, a trackless fugitive.
Therefore I kissed in thee Her, child! and innocency, And spring, and all things that have gone from me, And that shall never be;All vanished hopes, and all most hopeless bliss, Came with thee to my kiss.
And ah! so long myself had strayed afar From child, and woman, and the boon earth's green, And all wherewith life's face is fair beseen;Journeying its journey bare Five suns, except of the all-kissing sun Unkissed of one;Almost I had forgot The healing harms, And whitest witchery, a-lurk in that Authentic cestus of two girdling arms:
And I remembered not The subtle sanctities which dart From childish lips' unvalued precious brush, Nor how it makes the sudden lilies push Between the loosening fibres of the heart.
Then, that thy little kiss Should be to me all this, Let workaday wisdom blink sage lids thereat;Which towers a flight three hedgerows high, poor bat!