Nine Years Old

I.     Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy,     God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses,     Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy,     Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses     Ring forth gold of strains without alloy,     Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses     Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy,     Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is     Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy. II.     Even as he lay lapped about with flowers,     Lies the life now nine years old before us     Lapped about with love in all its hours;     Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus     Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers,     Some from hearts exultant born sonorous,     Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers     Two months hence, when springs light wings poised oer us     High shall hover, and her heart be ours. III.     Even as he, though man-forsaken, smiled     On the soft kind snakes divinely bidden     There to feed him in the green mid wild     Full with hurtless honey, till the hidden     Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild,     So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden,     So by loves lines blamelessly beguiled,     Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden     Yet by change that mars not yet the child. IV.     Ah, not yet! Thou, lord of night and day,     Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure,     Time, false friend who takst thy gifts away,     Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure,     Leave us yet some rapture of delay,     Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure     Unprophetic of delights decay,     Yet some nights and days wherein to measure     All the joys that bless us while they may. V.     Not the waste Arcadian woodland, wet     Still with dawn and vocal with Alpheus,     Reared a nursling worthier loves regret,     Lord, than this, whose eyes beholden free us     Straight from bonds the soul would fain forget,     Fain cast off, that night and day might see us     Clear once more of lifes vain fume and fret:     Leave us, then, whateer thy doom decree us,     Yet some days wherein to love him yet. VI.     Yet some days wherein the child is ours,     Ours, not thine, O lord whose hand is oer us     Always, as the sky with suns and showers     Dense and radiant, soundless or sonorous;     Yet some days for loves sake, ere the bowers     Fade wherein his fair first years kept chorus     Night and day with Graces robed like hours,     Ere this worshipped childhood wane before us,     Change, and bring forth fruitbut no more flowers. VII.     Love we may the thing that is to be,     Love we must; but how forego this olden     Joy, this flower of childish love, that we     Held more dear than aught of Time is holden     Time, whose laugh is like as Deaths to see     Time, who heeds not aught of all beholden,     Heard, or touched in passingflower or tree,     Tares or grain of leaden days or golden     More than wind has heed of ships at sea? VIII.     First the babe, a very rose of joy,     Sweet as hopes first note of jubilation,     Passes: then must growth and change destroy     Next the child, and mar the consecration     Hallowing yet, ere thought or sense annoy,     Childhoods yet half heavenlike habitation,     Bright as truth and frailer than a toy;     Whence its guest with eager gratulation     Springs, and life grows larger round the boy. IX.     Yet, ere sunrise wholly cease to shine,     Ere change come to chide our hearts, and scatter     Memories marked for loves sake with a sign,     Let the light of dawn beholden flatter     Yet some while our eyes that feed on thine,     Child, with love that change nor time can shatter,     Love, whose silent song says more than mine     Now, though charged with elder loves and latter     Here it hails a lord whose years are nine.