By The Trundle-Bed

TO M. M. R.

LOST love, be never beyond Love’s calling! For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet As fontal water in Arden falling, As first-mown hay in the April heat:

To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden, And bring to bloom in the outer cold, Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden, Our son that is like you, and six years old;

And lest his worth be the worth unreal, To ward him not from the mortal blast, But suffer your own, through a long ordeal, Verily like you to be at the last,

And hear men murmur, if so he merit In your old place with your look to arise: “The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?-- You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes.”