Ditty

Ah! Youth sweet youth! When we much younger were How clearer the vision stood When we at the fields looked Or trod the summer sea With oars and paddled boats Or else swam in low depths And basked on the warm sand In some half-hidden cove Along the rock hewn coast Of Circe’s silent isle A-dreaming in the dusk Its long, long years of past. With closed eyes were we A-dreaming and a-musing Without a thought a whim Of fathering our children: And now and now A pair of ruddy legs I see Is this my child to be? Ah! What strange convolutions Gray thought when drunk With red and warm-lit wine Goes through! What secret passages Throughout the brain Zig-zag in its hewn rock Adown the humid earth It looked child’s play Or some snakes and ladders Through long lost years Of silent history In fetters bound And striving for its liberty: With its lithe hands and feet A child’s lithe struggling hands A pair of struggling feet I seem dimly to see Is this my child to be? Turquoise and shining pearls And Eastern amulets From the deep ocean seas Of Indian oceans stolen And glittering necklaces Of some Valois princess: And mirrors brought from Crete To shine and all display In damasked Venetian halls: And all that beauty thinks And all that beauty finds Does come into my eyes And your sweet face methinks I see Is this my child to be?