for Tamsin and Gabriel
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
This morning, as I watch my son
Play with a loved toy horse so small
He need not fear it, I recall
His elder sister, not yet one,
Behind her cot bars, turning to peep
At me or, through the orbit of
The animals that wheeled above
Her head, to watch enlarging sleep
Involve her tiny world – her laugh
Hushed, and the babble, that addressed
And answered it. Like things possessed,
Kangaroo, tiger and giraffe,
Pivoted from an elephant’s
Huge bulk, in genial caricature
Grinning in disregard of her,
Went by her with a nod or prance.
Animals prowling through the air
In cycles of pursuit, restrained
From conflict by the space ordained
For harmony of movement: where
Else could the like be found but in
A mind whose thoughts cannot efface
With reasoning that longed-for place,
The garden of our origin –
Which she had glimpsed, who thought and saw
Nothing she could have known, a child
Looking with trust upon the wild
Through distance unaccounted for?
Could this be that Arcadia,
Where ‘inward laws that ruled the heart’
Ruled nature, the Creator’s art,
As well? Man the Artificer
Then was not: for his work presents,
Apart from us, a world we stand
Apart in and would understand;
He frees it from inconsequence,
Showing us, through attention paid
To things the distances remove,
That what is feared with reason, love
Need not renounce. Therefore he made
That mobile bestiary whose course
My girl watched, and these animals
Cluttered inside their farmyard walls,
Now, by my boy, who lifts a horse
As if he thought to elevate
The mystery of flesh and blood,
Priest-like toward an unknown god,
To praise and to propitiate.