| The Treasure |
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Three times have I beheld
Fear leap in a babe’s face, and take his breath,
Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.
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What is it justifies
This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
The terror in those eyes
When only eyes can speak—they are so young?
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Not yet those eyes had wept.
What does fear cherish that it locks so well?
What fortress is thus kept?
Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?
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And pain in the poor child,
Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb
In the poor beast, and wild
In the old decorous man, caught, overcome?
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Of what the outposts these?
Of what the fighting guardians? What demands
That sense of menaces,
And then such flying feet, imploring hands?
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Life: There’s nought else to seek;
Life only, little prized; but by design
Of nature prized. How weak,
How sad, how brief! O how divine, divine!
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