Page:A midsummer holiday and other poems (IA midsummerholiday00swin).pdf/99

87

NINE YEARS OLD.

February 4, 1883.

 

I.

Lord of light, whose shrine 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.