She breathèd deep, <br />And stepped from out life's stream <br />Upon the shore of sleep; <br />And parted from the earthly noise, <br />Leaving her world of toys, <br />To dwell a little in a dell of dream. <br /> <br />Then brooding on the love I hold so free, <br />My fond possessions come to be <br />Clouded with grief; <br />These fairy kisses, <br />This archness innocent, <br />Sting me with sorrow and disturbed content: <br />I think of what my portion might have been; <br />A dearth of blisses, <br />A famine of delights, <br />If I had never had what now I value most; <br />Till all I have seems something I have lost; <br />A desert underneath the garden shows, <br />And in a mound of cinders roots the rose. <br /> <br />Here then I linger by the little bed, <br />Till all my spirit's sphere, <br />Grows one half brightness and the other dead, <br />One half all joy, the other vague alarms; <br />And, holding each the other half in fee, <br />Floats like the growing moon <br />That bears implicitly <br />Her lessening pearl of shadow <br />Clasped in the crescent silver of her arms.<br /><br />Duncan Campbell Scott<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/by-a-child-s-bed/
