We Had a Child
We had a child, a little Fairy Prince,
Let loose from Elfland for our heart’s delight;
Ah! was it yesterday or four years since
He beamed upon our sight?
Four years—and yet it seems but yesterday
Since the blue wonder of his baby eyes.
Beneath their ebon-fringèd canopies,
Subdued us to his sway.
Three years—and yet but yestermorn it seems
Since first upon his feet he swaying stood,
Buoyed bravely up by memory’s magic dreams
Of elfin hardihood.
He stood, the while that long-forgotten lore
Lit all his lovely face with frolic glee;
And then—O marvel! to his mother’s knee
Walked the wide nursery floor.
Two years gone by—ah, no! but yesterday
Our bright-eyed nursling, swift as we could teach,
Forsook the low soft croonings of the fay
For broken human speech—
Broken, yet to our ears divinelier broken
Than sweetest snatches from Heaven’s mounting bird—
More eloquent than the poet’s passionate word
Supremely sung or spoken.
But O, our darling in his joyful dance
Tottered death-pale beneath the withering north,
Into a kinder clime, most blessed chance,
We caught him swiftly forth,
And there he bloomed again, our fairy boy,
Two year-long Aprils through in sun and shower,
Wing-footed Mercury of each merry hour,
The Genius of our joy.
And evermore we shared his shifting mood
Of hide-and-seek with April joy and sorrow,
Till not one shadow of solicitude
Remained to mar our morrow;
Yea, every fear had flown, lest, welladay!
The headlong heats or winter’s piercing power
Should light afresh upon our radiant flower
And wither him away.
———
We had a child, a little fairy child,
He kissed us on the lips but yesternight,
Yet when he wakened his blue eyes were wild
With fevered light.
We had a child—what countless ages since,
Did he go forth from us with wildered brain,
Will he come back and kiss us once again—
Our little Fairy Prince?