I SOMETIMES dream and dreaming long
For thee, strange boy whose golden head
With blossoms of unending song
Was garlanded.

Sad, surely, and contemptuous
And smiling thou beheld'st the game
Of life, as once Antinous
His splendid shame.

A softer light was in thine eyes
Than any that the moonbeam paints,
Or in some dead queen's hair that lies
Or blessed saint's.

And yet, perchance thou hadst no art,
Nor depth, nor subtlety,—a boy
To whom a poet's singing heart
Was but a toy.