OLITTLE loop of water, with the green Of girdling grasses round your lustered sheen, Where are the boats the children used to ride Upon the bosom of your dimpled tide? Those boats they loved, and launched with large-eyed zest On Orient faring or for Polar quest? Where are the boats, -- and where the children, too? Have they, as such explorers often do, Sunk with their ships? Or do they haply find The new is like the old they left behind: Their deep-sea conquests and their valiant claims To far-found earth are naught but childish games? I know not, but I know they are not here, These young adventurers of yesteryear. Is it because November, keen with frost, Is come, or are the tiny strayers lost? I listen, and I wait; perhaps the spring Will lure them back, and with the first bird's wing Up in the blue, again shall spread the sails That took the sunlight, or that dared the gales: Perhaps, -- when comes the May: or must it be, In that far spring men call Eternity? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...OVID, OLD BUDDY, I WOULD DISCOURSE WITH YOU A WHILE by HAYDEN CARRUTH CHAMBER MUSIC: 11 by JAMES JOYCE FIVE TREES by LOUIS UNTERMEYER SIMON THE CYRENIAN SPEAKS by COUNTEE CULLEN MADRIGAL: 1 by WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN MISERY: SORDID SCENE by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON ENDORSEMENT TO THE DEED OF SEPARATION, IN THE APRIL OF 1816 by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |