..
Hadst Thou ever any toys,
Like us little girls and boys?
And didst Thou play in Heaven with all
The angels, that were not too tall?...
So, a little Child, come down
And hear a child's tongue like Thy own;
Take me by the hand and walk,
And listen to my baby-talk."
But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul.
"I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair."
Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, to
Nature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pure
abandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one with
cloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide.
"I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes,
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather."
Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr.
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