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THE TOYS
MY little son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes | |
| And mov’d and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, | |
| Having my law the seventh time disobey’d, | |
| I struck him, and dismiss’d | |
| With hard words and unkiss’d, | 5 |
| His Mother, who was patient, being dead. | |
| Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, | |
| I visited his bed, | |
| But found him slumbering deep, | |
| With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet | 10 |
| From his late sobbing wet. | |
| And I, with moan, | |
| Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; | |
| For, on a table drawn beside his head, | |
| He had put, within his reach, | 15 |
| A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone, | |
| A piece of glass abraded by the beach, | |
| And six or seven shells, | |
| A bottle with bluebells | |
| And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, | 20 |
| To comfort his sad heart. | |
| So when that night I pray’d | |
| To God, I wept, and said: | |
| Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, | |
| Not vexing Thee in death, | 25 |
| And Thou rememberest of what toys | |
| We made our joys, | |
| How weakly understood | |
| Thy great commanded good, | |
| Then, fatherly not less | 30 |
| Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, | |
| Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say, | |
| “I will be sorry for their childishness.” | |
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THE TWO DESERTS
Not greatly mov’d with awe am I | |
| To learn that we may spy | 35 |
| Five thousand firmaments beyond our own. | |
| The best that ’s known | |
| Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small. | |
| View’d close, the Moon’s fair ball | |
| Is of ill objects worst, | 40 |
| A corpse in Night’s highway, naked, firescarr’d, accurst; | |
| And now they tell | |
| That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst | |
| Too horribly for hell. | |
| So, judging from these two, | 45 |
| As we must do, | |
| The Universe, outside our living Earth, | |
| Was all conceiv’d in the Creator’s mirth, | |
| Forecasting at the time Man’s spirit deep, | |
| To make dirt cheap. | 50 |
| Put by the Telescope! | |
| Better without it man may see, | |
| Stretch’d awful in the hush’d midnight, | |
| The ghost of his eternity. | |
| Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye | 55 |
| The things which near us lie, | |
| Till Science rapturously hails, | |
| In the minutest water-drop, | |
| A torment of innumerable tails. | |
| These at the least do live. | 60 |
| But rather give | |
| A mind not much to pry | |
| Beyond our royal-fair estate | |
| Betwixt these deserts blank of small and great. | |
| Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are, | 65 |
| Pressing to catch our gaze, | |
| And out of obvious ways | |
| Ne’er wandering far. | |
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