THE children! ah, the children! Your innocent, joyous ones; Your daughters, with souls of sunshine; Your buoyant and laughing sons. Look long in their happy faces, Drink love from their sparkling eyes, For the wonderful charm of childhood, How soon it withers and dies! A few fast-vanishing summers, A season or twain of frost, And you suddenly ask, bewildered "What is it my heart hath lost?" Perhaps you see by the hearth-stone Some Juno, stately and proud, Or a Hebe whose softly ambushed eyes Flash out from the golden cloud Of lavish and beautiful tresses That wantonly floating, stray O'er the white of a throat and bosom More fair than blossoms in May. And perhaps you mark their brothers -- Young heroes who spurn the sod With the fervor of antique knighthood, And the air of a Grecian god! But where, ah, where are the children, Your household fairies of yore? Alack! they are dead, and their grace has fled For ever and ever more! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...READING WHITMAN IN A TOILET STALL by TIMOTHY LIU AN ISLAND (SAINT HELENA, 1821) by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON A WAR SONG TO ENGLISHMEN by WILLIAM BLAKE IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 101 by ALFRED TENNYSON THE ROAD TO APPENZELL by HENRY GLASSFORD BELL THE GOLDEN ODES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA: LEBID by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |