I KNOW a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder, Than any story painted in your books. You are so glad? It will not make you gladder; Yet listen, with your pretty restless looks. "Is it a Fairy Story?" Well, half fairy-- At least it dates far back as fairies do, And seems to me as beautiful and airy; Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true. You had a baby sister and a brother, (Two very dainty people, rosily white, Each sweeter than all things except the other!) Older yet younger -- gone from human sight! And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever, And think with yearning tears how each light hand Crept toward bright bloom or berries -- I shall never Know how I lost them. Do you understand? Poor slightly golden heads! I think I missed them First, in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way; But when and where with lingering lips I kissed them, My gradual parting, I can never say. Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss, Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherished, For their small sakes, since my most lovely loss. I fancy, too, that they were softly covered By robins, out of apple-flowers they knew, Whose nursing wings in far home sunshine hovered, Before the timid world had dropped the dew. Their names were -- what yours are! At this you wonder. Their pictures are -- your own, as you have seen; And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under Lost leaves -- why, it is your dead selves I mean! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOM O'ROUGHLEY by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS PROPERZIA ROSSI by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS A SHROPSHIRE LAD: 15 by ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN MANNERLY MARGERY, MILK AND ALE by JOHN SKELTON IN AN ANCIENT LAND by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE BEING A MOTHER by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: A NIGHT IN THE FISHERMAN'S HUT by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |