Page:A father of women, and other poems, Meynell, 1917.djvu/24

 THE TREASURE

HREE times have I beheld

Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath,

Fear, like the fear of eld

That knows the price of life, the name of death.

What is it justifies

This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,

The terror in those eyes

When only eyes can speak—they are so young?

Not yet those eyes had wept.

What does fear cherish that it locks so well?

What fortress is thus kept?

Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?

And pain in the poor child,

Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb

In the poor beast, and wild

In the old decorous man, caught, overcome?

Of what the outposts these?

Of what the fighting guardians? What demands

That sense of menaces,

And then such flying feet, imploring hands?

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