Daughter!
Daughter! Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid. My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle, And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind. I have walked and prayed for my child an hour, And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years to come Dancing to a frenzied drum Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. May she be granted beauty, Being made beautiful overmuch, Consider beauty a sufficient end, May she become a flourishing hidden tree, That all her thoughts may like the linnet be, And have no business but dispensing round Their magnanimities of sound; Oh, may she live like some green laurel Rooted in one dear perpetual place. Considering that, all hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will i
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