The Bugler's First Communion

A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hill There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish         Mother to an English sire (he Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will), This very very day came down to us after a boon he on My late being there begged of me, overflowing         Boon in my bestowing, Came, I say, this day to it—to a First Communion. Here he knelt then ín regimental red. Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet         To his youngster take his treat! Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead. There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine, By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling,       dauntless;         Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless; Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine. Frowning and forefending angel-warder Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;         March, kind comrade, abreast him; Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order. How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill, When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach         Yields tender as a pushed peach, Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will! Then though I should tread tufts of consolation Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to         And do serve God to serve to Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration. Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strains Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending         That sweet's sweeter ending; Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns. O now well work that sealing sacred ointment! O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad         And locks love ever in a lad! Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift. In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing         That brow and bead of being, An our day's God's own Galahad. Though this child's       drift Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam         In backwheels though bound home?— That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by; Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did         Prayer go disregarded: Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven       heard these.