I beg the pardon of these flowers
For bringing them to one whose hair
Alone doth shame, beyond compare,
The sweetest blooms of richest bowers.
I beg the pardon of this maid
For offering them with hand less pure,
A heart less perfect, needing cure...
Child, weary of thy baubles of to-day—
Child with the golden or the silver hair—
Say, how wouldst thou have built creation’s stair,
Hadst thou been free to have thy puny way?
Could thy intelligence have shot the ray
That lit the universe of upper air?...
Home from the observatory,
Now I take her on my knee,
And I tell her all the glory
That the lenses showed to me.
Pleased, she listens to my story,
Earnest look then turneth she
Where the stars are softly blinking
In the blue of...
