Page:Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems (IA tristramoflyonesswinrich).pdf/276

258 There beats not in the heart of May, When summer hopes and springtide fears, There falls not from the height of day, When sunlight speaks and silence hears, So sweet a psalm as children play And sing, each hour of all their years, Each moment of their lovely way, And know not how it thrills our ears.

Ah child, what are we, that our ears Should hear you singing on your way, Should have this happiness? The years Whose hurrying wings about us play Are not like yours, whose flower-time fears Nought worse than sunlit showers in May, Being sinless as the spring, that hears Her own heart praise her every day.

Yet we too triumph in the day That bare, to entrance our eyes and ears, To lighten daylight, and to play Such notes as darkness knows and fears, The child whose face illumes our way, Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears, Whose hand is as the hand of May To bring us flowers from eight full years.