To a Child Dancing Upon the Shore

Dance there upon the shore;

What need have you to care

For wind or water’s roar?

And tumble out your hair

That the salt drops have wet;

Being young you have not known

The fool’s triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won

Nor the best labourer dead

And all the sheaves to bind

What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?

Has no one said those daring

Kind eyes should be more learn’d?

Or warned you how despairing

The moths are when they are burned

I could havе warned you, but you are young

So we spеak a different tongue

O you will take what ever’s offered

And dream that all the world’s a friend

Suffer as your mother suffered

Be as broken in the end

But I am old and you are young

And I speak a barbarous tongue