John Kenyon: Verses about Childhood

TO---


So when, mere child, I crossed the Atlantic tide,
Ah! ne'er to see our Carib isle again—
There, as it chanced, the watchful seaman spied
A bark come drifting o'er the azure plain;
Which, as it neared us, we beheld it void
Of living thing—alone on that wide main;
Hinting a tale of wretches that had died
By rock, or whelming surge, or hunger-slain
On the waste wave. So on that bark did go
Unquestioned; bearing o'er the waters blue
Its own mysterious story—none might know;
But left me, as it faded on the view,
With spirit stirred, and eye unconsciously
That strained upon that solitary sea.

TO---


I judge not hardly childhood's giddy glee;
For I remember when my mother died,
Half-wondering at that age what death might be,
How few the tears I shed. And when they hied
To shape her garden-grave (use,—sanctified
Among the dwellers of our tropic isle)
Where tamarind and orange, side by side,
Wove brightest bower, I too was there the while;
If moist-eyed 'mid the sad, yet curious more
Than sorrowful. But when the blasted rock,
Impracticable else, shook off a store
Of fruit, down raining at the nitrous shock,
On rushed I, with a childish joy, to seize
My spoil, the fruit of those grave-shadowing trees.

TO---


Yet brood deep feelings in the youngling breast,
Though undeveloped, natural as speech;
And my own tropic isle this truth impressed,
That Nature teaches more than man may teach.
'Twas on an orange-tree, just within reach
Of childish hands, a bird had built her nest,
A mother-bird; and ne'er more impious breach
Than mine upon that blissful home of rest,
On sleeping town did night-sped warrior make;
And memory yet recals the mournful song
Which the reft parent, for her nestlings' sake,
Poured, round her ruined dwelling hovering long;
While every touch, that did her grief impart,
Dropt, like a precept, on my conscious heart.