Out at the doorway with shrill delight
Ringing, clear of alloy,
After a butterfly flashing so white
As it wheels and floats in the soft sunlight,
He darts, O adventurous joy!

Away! the fields are waving, the wheat
Stands proudly over the path,
The path winds onward, winning his feet
Through avenues arched and shady and sweet,—
Sweet vista that childhood hath.

But stay: the butterfly has upflown
High in the stainless blue;
Under the shadowing wheat alone,
He stands and wonders, still as a stone,
For all the world is new.

He sees each beautiful stem, blue-green,
Standing alone in its grace,
Great pendulous poppies aflame between,
And little convolvulus climbing to screen
That dim forest world from his face.

He sees overhead as they dance to its tune
The ears flash white in the wind,
But that musical laugh before mid-noon
Ripples far and faint in the heat, and soon
Leaves silence only behind.

And the silence falls on his fresh young soul,
Like the far sound of the sea,
Infinite, solemn; its strange control
Possesses him quite; quick fancies roll
Through his brain; half fearfully

He looks; and the long path seems to strain
His tremulous lips apart;
Some sudden trouble his eyes sustain;
For so the folded blossom of pain
Has broke in his childish heart.

What is it?—some swift intuitive glance,
Half-shapen only in thought,
Of stranger worlds, of wide mischance?
Some intimate sense of severance
Or loss?—I know not what.

He turns and leaps; for his mother’s arms
Out of the doorway lean;
She folds him safely from all alarms,
And rallies his courage with rhythmical charms,—
Yet knows not what he has seen.