A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems/After a Reading
AFTER A READING.
For the seven times seventh time love would renew the
delight without end or alloy
That it takes in the praise as it takes in the presence of
eyes that fulfil it with joy;
But how shall it praise them and rest unrebuked by the
presence and pride of the boy?
Praise meet for a child is unmeet for an elder whose
winters and springs are nine:
What song may have strength in its wings to expand
them, or light in its eyes to shine,
That shall seem not as weakness and darkness if matched
with the theme I would fain make mine?
The round little flower of a face that exults in the sun-
shine of shadowless days
Defies the delight it enkindles to sing of it aught not
unfit for the praise
Of the sweetest of all things that eyes may rejoice in and
tremble with love as they gaze.
Such tricks and such meanings abound on the lips and
the brows that are brighter than light,
The demure little chin, the sedate little nose, and the
forehead of sun-stained white,
That love overflows into laughter and laughter subsides
into love at the sight.
Each limb and each feature has action in tune with the
meaning that smiles as it speaks
From the fervour of eyes and the fluttering of hands in a
foretaste of fancies and freaks,
When the thought of them deepens the dimples that
laugh in the corners and curves of his cheeks.
As a bird when the music within her is yet too intense to
be spoken in song,
That pauses a little for pleasure to feel how the notes
from withinwards throng,
So pauses the laugh at his lips for a little, and waxes
within more strong.
As the music elate and triumphal that bids all things of
the dawn bear part
With the tune that prevails when her passion has risen
into rapture of passionate art,
So lightens the laughter made perfect that leaps from its
nest in the heaven of his heart.
Deep, grave and sedate is the gaze of expectant intensity
bent for awhile
And absorbed on its aim as the tale that enthralls him
uncovers the weft of its wile,
Till the goal of attention is touched, and expectancy
kisses delight in a smile.
And it seems to us here that in Paradise hardly the spirit
of Lamb or of Blake
May hear or behold aught sweeter than lightens and rings
when his bright thoughts break
In laughter that well might lure them to look, and to
smile as of old for his sake.
O singers that best loved children, and best for their
sakes are beloved of us here,
In the world of your life everlasting, where love has no
thorn and desire has no fear,
All else may be sweeter than aught is on earth, nought
dearer than these are dear.