LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling!
For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet
As fontal water in Arden falling,
As first-mown hay in the April heat:
To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden,
And bring to bloom in the outer cold,
Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden,
Our son that is like you, and six years old;
And lest his worth be the worth unreal,
To ward him not from the mortal blast,
But suffer your own, through a long ordeal,
Verily like you to be at the last,
And hear men murmur, if so he merit
In your old place with your look to arise:
"The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?—
You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes."