Ambarvalia/Burbidge/To an Idiot Child
TO AN IDIOT CHILD.
Sweet Child! what light is in those eyes?
Like islands bright in sunset skies,
Ablaze with glory overweening
Yet cold—alive, yet dead of meaning!
Two goats upon the rocks at play
Not wilder as they climb and leap;
Yet torpid in their sense are they
As awful mountain lakes that sleep
Far deepening downward from the day,
To caves a thousand fathoms deep!
Child of love, what hath become
Of thy sweet tongue?—would it were dumb!
—That now doth boisterously climb
Along the fragmentary rhyme,
Years back within thine infant ear
Lodged lightly—thus to re-appear,
Thus, as a vague deceitful Muse
Its melody may re-infuse
Into a heart that hath declined
From the pure guidance of the mind.
O limbs, whose life is it ye live?
Which now no more your service give
To a considerant human soul!
Is it the wind which doth control
This graceful twining of your play?
Or do mild spirits, gently gay,
Thus prompt your motions to obey
The self-same impulse which persuades
The woodbine, deep in oaken shades,
Her sturdy pillar to embrace
With movements of such matchless grace
Or bids the skylark, of pure sound
Extracted from the dewy ground
While morning yet is all divine,
About the fleeing stars entwine,
In modulations soft as strong,
The bright inevitable line
Of its elastic song?
Poor Child! when Fancy's all is said,
What art thou but a creature dead,—
Dead to the real life of life,
The spiritual stir—the strife
Ineffable of soul and sense!
Yet mayst thou live without offence;
And thou, poor Child, in memory
A monument shalt stand to me
(With many a gem and many a flower,
And many a cloudlet of the sky),
Of God's surpassing love and power,
Who, speaking only to the eye,
Can carry with an inward smart
A voiceless meaning; to the heart.