Are we but truants from a parent stern—
Whose strait commands with fear we long obeyed,
Till, gladdened by the sunlight, far we strayed,
And lingered by the woodside and the byrne,
The bird's sweet passion at the sun's return,
The flower's grieving at his sight delayed,
With wistful, long-pent love, to watch and learn,
Till evening come, and we turn home dismayed?

Or have we grown unto our fuller seeing,
The manhood of our days, when evermore
Our Father speaks and, punishment decreeing,
Is high and silent from his sapphire door?
Forever past, the childhood of our being:
He stoops to reason who but spake before.

Literary Monthly, 1908.