By A Child's Bed

She breathèd deep, And stepped from out life's stream Upon the shore of sleep; And parted from the earthly noise, Leaving her world of toys, To dwell a little in a dell of dream. Then brooding on the love I hold so free, My fond possessions come to be Clouded with grief; These fairy kisses, This archness innocent, Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content: I think of what my portion might have been; A dearth of blisses, A famine of delights, If I had never had what now I value most; Till all I have seems something I have lost; A desert underneath the garden shows, And in a mound of cinders roots the rose. Here then I linger by the little bed, Till all my spirit's sphere, Grows one half brightness and the other dead, One half all joy, the other vague alarms; And, holding each the other half in fee, Floats like the growing moon That bears implicitly Her lessening pearl of shadow Clasped in the crescent silver of her arms.