TO AN INFANT.

WRITTEN ON A SNOWY DAY.

SOME say, sweet babe, thy mind is but a blank,
As white and vacant as the level field

Of unsunn'd snow, that passively must yield
To human foot, to vapour dull and dank,
To wheel indenting slow, with sullen clank,
To wanton tracery of urchin wild.

I deem not so of any human child,

Nor can believe our nature ever sank

To such a lowness. Nay, my pretty boy!

In thy shrill laugh there is intelligence;
And though we can but guess, or how, or whence
Thy soul was wafted—from what realm of joy

Or mere privation thou hast hither come,-
Thought has come with thee, happy thought, though

dumb.

TO A DEAF AND DUMB LITTLE GIRL.

LIKE a loose island on the wide expanse,
Unconscious floating on the fickle sea,
Herself her all, she lives in privacy;
Her waking life as lonely as a trance,
Doom'd to behold the universal dance,
And never hear the music which expounds
The solemn step, coy slide, the merry bounds,
The vague, mute language of the countenance.
In vain for her I smooth my antic rhyme;
She cannot hear it, all her little being
Concentred in her solitary seeing-

What can she know of beaut [eous] or sublime ?
And yet methinks she looks so calm and good,
God must be with her in her solitude.

THE GOD-CHILD.

I STOOD beside thee in the holy place,
And saw the holy sprinkling on thy brow,

And was both bond and witness to the vow
Which own'd thy need, confirm'd thy claim of grace ;
That sacred sign which time shall not efface
Declared thee His, to whom all angels bow,
Who bade the herald saint the rite allow

To the sole sinless of all Adam's race.
That was indeed an awful sight to see;
And oft, I fear, for what my love hath done,
As voucher of thy sweet communion
In thy [sweet] Saviour's blessed mystery.
Would I might give thee back, my little one,
But half the good that I have got from thee.

TWINS.

BUT born to die, they just had felt the air,
When God revoked the mandate of their doom.
A brief imprisonment within the womb,

Of human life was all but all their share.

Two whiter souls unstain'd with sin or care

Shall never blossom from the fertile tomb;-
Twin flowers that wasted not on earth their bloom,
So quickly Heaven reclaim'd the spotless pair.
Let man that on his own desert relies,

And deems himself the creditor of God,

Think how these babes have earn'd their paradise,
How small the work of their small period:
Their very cradle was the hopeful grave,

God only made them for His Christ to save.

BOYHOOD AND GIRLHOOD.

DID our first parents in their happy seat,
New from the Maker's hand, a wedded pair,
In livelier hues their several sex declare

Than that brave boy, and that wee lady sweet?
Though not in measure nor in mind complete
They come, a perfect husband and a bride;
Yet is the seal impress'd and testified
By prophet Nature, till the season meet.
The girl, a girl instinct with simple arts,
And all the innocent cunning of her sex;
A very girl, delighting to perplex
The eye of love with antic change of parts:
Burly and bold the lad, his mien denotes
One-hearted manhood even in petticoats.