I saw you go by
And I saw in your face
More than I heard
In the rigid grace
And dance of your hippity-
Hoppity pace.

Child, too many
Have passed as you do;
You tell of the many
And nothing of you:
What many have done,
What many will do.
Yet for all the archaic
Accents you speak
I am permitted
To see in the streak
Of sunlight that makes
A bronze of your cheek,
Something immobile
For all that you move
As transient as wind.
And for all that you prove
Nothing endures
For me you prove
A static symbol.
And strange, child, strange,
That my idea of you
Owes nothing to change,
While you must be prey
To life's wasting range.

Light strikes you to bronze,
And forgetting the rhyme
And trite rhythm you use,
I would sing you to time—
In syllabled sculpture
Give you to time.