The eddies have an air too, and brave it is and blithe;
I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe;
And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray
The Evenlode comes singing to join the pretty play.
But where I heard that music I cannot rightly tell;
I only know I heard it, and that I know full well:
I heard a little water, and, oh, the sky was blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.
FOR WILMA
(AGED FIVE YEARS)
Like winds that with the setting of the sun
Draw to a quiet murmuring and cease,
So is her little struggle fought and done;
And the brief fever and the pain
In a last sigh fade out and so release
The lately-breathing dust they may not hurt again.
Now all that Wilma was is made as naught:
Stilled is the laughter that was erst our pleasure;
The pretty air, the childish grace untaught,
The innocent wiles,
And all the sunny smiles,
The cheek that flushed to greet some tiny treasure;
The mouth demure, the tilted chin held high,
The gleeful flashes of her glancing eye;
Her shy bold look of wildness unconfined,
And the gay impulse of her baby mind
That none could tame,
That sent her spinning round,
A spirit of living flame
Dancing in airy rapture o'er the ground--
All these with that faint sigh are made to be
Man's breath upon a glass, a mortal memory.
Then from the silent room where late she played,
Setting a steady course toward the light,
Swifter than thistledown the little shade,
Reft from the nooks that she had made her own
And from the love that sheltered, fared alone
Forth through the gloomy spaces of the night,
Until at last she lit before the gate
Where all the suppliant shades must stand and wait.
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