Give full abandonment to all your gay
Swift childlike impulses in rompish play;--
The while your sisters in shrill laughter shout,
Whirling above the leaves and round about,--
Until at length it drops behind the wall,--
With awkward jerks, the particoloured ball:
Winning a smile even from the stooping age
Of that old matron leaning on her page,
Who in the orchard takes a stroll or two,
Watching you closely yet unseen by you.

Then, tired of gambols, turn into the dark
Fir-skirted margins of your father's park;
And watch the moving shadows, as you pass,
Trace their dim network on the tufted grass,
And how on birch-trunks smooth and branches old,
The velvet moss bursts out in green and gold,
Like the rich lustre full and manifold
On breasts of birds that star the curtained gloom
From their glass cases in the drawing room.
Mark the spring leafage bend its tender spray
Gracefully on the sky's aerial grey;
And listen how the birds so voluble
Sing joyful paeans winding to a swell,
And how the wind, fitful and mournful, grieves
In gusty whirls among the dry red leaves;
And watch the minnows in the water cool,
And floating insects wrinkling all the pool.

So in your ramblings bend your earnest eyes.
High thoughts and feelings will come unto you,--
Gladness will fall upon your heart like dew,--
Because you love the earth and love the skies.

Fair pearl, the pride of all our family:
Girt with the plenitude of joys so strong,
Fashion and custom dull can do no wrong:
Nestling your young face thus on Nature's knee.

"Jesus Wept"

Mary rose up, as one in sleep might rise,
And went to meet her brother's Friend: and they
Who tarried with her said: "she goes to pray
And weep where her dead brother's body lies."
So, with their wringing of hands and with sighs,
They stood before Him in the public way.
"Had'st Thou been with him, Lord, upon that day,
He had not died," she said, drooping her eyes.
Mary and Martha with bowed faces kept
Holding His garments, one on each side.--"Where
Have ye laid him?" He asked. "Lord, come and see."
The sound of grieving voices heavily
And universally was round Him there,
A sound that smote His spirit. Jesus wept.

Sonnets for Pictures

1. For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck; in the Academy of
Bruges

Mystery: God, Man's Life, born