In Rama

A little face there was,   When all her pains were done, Beside that face I loved:   They said it was a son. A son to me—how strange!—   Who never was a man, But lived from change to change   A boy, as I began. More boyish still the hope   That leaped within me then, That I, matured in him,   Should found a house of men; And all my wasted sheaves,   Bound up in his ripe shock, Give seed to sterner times   And name to sterner stock. He grew to that ideal,   And blossomed in my sight; Strange questions filled his day,   Sweet visions in the night, Till he could walk with me,   Companion, hand in hand; But nothing seemed to be   Like him, in Wonder-land. For he was leading me   Beyond the bounds of mind, Far down Eternity,   And I so far behind. One day an angel stepped   Out of the idle sphere; The man had entered in,   The boy is weeping here. My house is founded there   In heaven that he has won. Shall I be outlawed, then,   O Lord who hast my son? This grief that makes me old,   These tears that make me pure. They tell me time is time,   And only heaven mature.