| |
| A BUGLAR boy from barrack (it is over the hill | |
| There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish | |
| Mother to an English sire (he | |
| Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will), | |
| |
| This very very day came down to us after a boon he on | 5 |
| My late being there begged of me, overflowing | |
| Boon in my bestowing, | |
| Came, I say, this day to it—to a First Communion. | |
| |
| Here he knelt then ín regimental red. | |
| Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet | 10 |
| To his youngster take his treat! | |
| Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead. | |
| |
| There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine, | |
| By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ’s darling, dauntless; | |
| Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless; | 15 |
| Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine. | |
| |
| Frowning and forefending angel-warder | |
| Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him; | |
| March, kind comrade, abreast him; | |
| Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order. | 20 |
| |
| How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill, | |
| When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach | |
| Yields tender as a pushed peach, | |
| Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will! | |
| |
| Then though I should tread tufts of consolation | 25 |
| Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to | |
| And do serve God to serve to | |
| Just such slips of soldiery Christ’s royal ration. | |
| |
| Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strains | |
| Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending | 30 |
| That sweet’s sweeter ending; | |
| Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns. | |
| |
| O now well work that sealing sacred ointment! | |
| O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad | |
| And locks love ever in a lad! | 35 |
| Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment | |
| |
| Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift, | |
| In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing | |
| That brow and bead of being, | |
| An our day’s God’s own Galahad. Though this child’s drift | 40 |
| |
| Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry | |
| Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam | |
| In backwheels though bound home?— | |
| That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by; | |
| |
| Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas | 45 |
| Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did | |
| Prayer go disregarded: | |
| Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven heard these. | |
| |
| See Notes. |
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