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 n 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 des 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     Dys fter, s I in a sort deserve to     And do serve God to serve to     Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration.     Nothing lse 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 thre rigns.     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 m 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 divne doom chnnelled, 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.