Eos: An Epic of the Dawn, and Other Poems

By Nicholas Flood Davin

 

TO “BAY MI.”

 
Lacking a good three years of seven,
Sunny-haired boy with eyes of heaven,
With everlasting ripple of laughter;
As yet no touch of worldly leaven
In thy frank soul. Oh! how you capture
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All hearts, and drown in present joy
The cares which come from before and after,
Sunny-haired, blue-eyed, happy boy!

Running, jumping, never at rest,
    Now using one toy, now abusing another,
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Caning your dearest friends in jest,
    Ruling father and sister and mother,
And bowing all wills to your high behest—
I could watch your movements all day long;
    Whether you laugh or whether you cry,
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    Like a bird or a rill you enchain the eye,
And you fill the heart like a burst of song.

As pageants held in ruined towers
Will make the sad place glad once more,
As laughing waves on wreck-strewn shore,
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As summer sunshine after showers,
You brighten up the weary heart,
And charm with sweet unconscious wiles,
So that the tears which still will start,
Before they fall are lost in smiles,
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And you are folded to my breast, [Page 74]

And patted and caressed;
My hand runs through your golden hair,
The world is seen in hues of love,
There’s not a cloud in heaven above,
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    And all the earth is fair!
Scorn and hate—each evil passion flies
Before the beauty of your sinless eyes.

You—best of preachers I have seen!
    You steal into the heart, bid flow
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    The dried up streams of long ago,
    The farthest shores of memory glow
With fragrant flowers and tempering green.
So that this truth I more discern,
    If moral beauty we would wed,
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    We must, as the Great Master said,
Of little children learn.

OTTAWA, April 17th, 1884.
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