 | 'Twixt Kiss and Lip or Under the Sword. By the author of "Women Must Weep," [i.e. F. W. O. Ward] Third edition |  |
BABY EYES.
Baby eyes look out in wistful wonder,
Out upon a world all new and strange
Rolling on, with rifts that close and sunder
Evermore, in gleam and gloom of change;
Dazzled yet by light, unknown to mortals,
Clinging to the brow in glorious beams,
Left by fairer lands and palace portals
Glimpsed in visions of unearthly dreams;
Unaccustomed to the garish glitter
Shed by gaslit courts, and ghostly day
Making ruin but more bright and bitter,
Lurid candles shining on decay.
Out upon a world all new and strange
Rolling on, with rifts that close and sunder
Evermore, in gleam and gloom of change;
Dazzled yet by light, unknown to mortals,
Clinging to the brow in glorious beams,
Left by fairer lands and palace portals
Glimpsed in visions of unearthly dreams;
Unaccustomed to the garish glitter
Shed by gaslit courts, and ghostly day
Making ruin but more bright and bitter,
Lurid candles shining on decay.
Baby eyes look fondly into others,
Clouded by the seeing that is sin,
Catching no reflexion from a mother's,
Like the splendour yet unquenched within;
Round with awe, and tremulously oping
Wide and wider to the curse and blight
Staring round, and vaguely vainly hoping
On for something of their own delight;
Finding, in those mean and muddy fountains,
Only night of shame and evil scars,
Not the dawn that dwells on virgin mountains,
Tender rays of unarisen stars.
Clouded by the seeing that is sin,
Catching no reflexion from a mother's,
Like the splendour yet unquenched within;
Round with awe, and tremulously oping
Wide and wider to the curse and blight
Staring round, and vaguely vainly hoping
On for something of their own delight;
Finding, in those mean and muddy fountains,
Only night of shame and evil scars,
Not the dawn that dwells on virgin mountains,
Tender rays of unarisen stars.
Baby eyes, in deep unuttered paining,
Turn from hers that cannot solace give,
Dim with disappointed love, and straining
Somewhere yet in kinder eyes to live;
Turning blankly in those blasted spaces,
Haunted by dark forms they idly woo,
With their sweet appeal to cruel faces,
Blind to all that is not blasted too;
Fresh from gazing upon God, and longing
Now His image to behold in some,
Seeking now, amid the wrecks of wronging,
For the sight desired that will not come.
Turn from hers that cannot solace give,
Dim with disappointed love, and straining
Somewhere yet in kinder eyes to live;
Turning blankly in those blasted spaces,
Haunted by dark forms they idly woo,
With their sweet appeal to cruel faces,
Blind to all that is not blasted too;
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Now His image to behold in some,
Seeking now, amid the wrecks of wronging,
For the sight desired that will not come.
Baby eyes, like creatures wild and hunted,
Flee for refuge to the friendlier wall—
From the life so early starved and stunted—
Where the shadows making pictures fall;
Watching there, to hide the unhomed anguish,
Doors and windows breaking into light,
Though they cannot choose but pine and languish
Sorely, for the lost and better sight;
Waiting, while the barriers are unbolted,
That would bind the spirit unto clay,
Misery from which it has revolted,
Till they ope in everlasting day.
Flee for refuge to the friendlier wall—
From the life so early starved and stunted—
Where the shadows making pictures fall;
Watching there, to hide the unhomed anguish,
Doors and windows breaking into light,
Though they cannot choose but pine and languish
Sorely, for the lost and better sight;
Waiting, while the barriers are unbolted,
That would bind the spirit unto clay,
Misery from which it has revolted,
Till they ope in everlasting day.
| 'Twixt Kiss and Lip or Under the Sword. By the author of "Women Must Weep," [i.e. F. W. O. Ward] Third edition | |