The Triangular Society :: :: University of Virginia Library

As through the busy street I pass,
Often, in sun or rain,
I mark some pleasant household group
Behind a window-pane;
The mother is politely blind,
The father does not see,
But if a baby face is there,
The baby smiles at me.

201

Dear sinless soul of babyhood!
She does not coldly wait
To ask about my bank-account,
Or bonds, or real estate;
With small soft face against the pane,
And dove-like coo the while,
She beckons with her dainty hand,
And answers back my smile.

She does not scorn my glance because
She never heard my name,
Nor query of my social place,
Nor question whence I came;
No tedious rule of etiquette
Restrains her loving grace,
Or chills the winning smile that lights
Her lovely wild-flower face.

She knows me by that nameless sense,
That wisdom sweet and fine,
Which babies have, ere time has spoiled
Their innocence divine;
That strange, unerring magnetism
Which some kind angel sends,
By which all sinless things perceive
And recognize their friends;

The silent sympathy which makes
The homeless dog I meet
Forget his hungry lonesomeness
To fawn about my feet;
Which draws the pigeons to my hand,
Fearless and trustful still,
And makes the social sparrows crowd
My friendly window-sill.

202

Ah! though the world seems full, sometimes,
Of darkness and of dust,
The soul is not quite desolate
Which birds and babies trust;
Life is not all a wilderness,
Made up of grief and guile,
While eyes so shadowless and sweet
Smile back to eyes that smile!