Their task, their fate, we hardly guess,—
But, oh, may it be happiness!
Not always leisure, always play,
But worky-day and holy-day;
With holy Sabbaths interspersed,
And not the busiest day the worst.
Not doom'd, with needle or with pen,
To drudge for o'er-exacting men,
Nor any way to toil for lucre
At frown of he or she rebuker;
But still affectionate and free
Their never weary housewifery.
Blest lot be thine, my nestling dove,
Never to work except in love;
And God protect thy little hand
From task imposed by unbeloved command!
TO JEANNETTE, SIX WEEKS OLD.
OUR birth and death alike are mysteries,
And thou, sweet babe, art a mysterious thing,
In mute simplicity of passive being,
A co-essential symbol of the life
Which God hath made a witness of Himself;
The all of God which heathen wisdom knew,
And heathen ignorance so far mistook,
Seeking the substance in the duskiest shade;
Dusky and distant as the pillar'd cloud.
That never nearer, never farther, taught
The chosen seed their journey o'er the wild,
But in the promised land was seen no more.
Dim is the brightest shadow of the Lord
That earth reflects: an infant's life might seem
A scarce distinguishable effluence-
An air-blown globule of the living ocean.
And yet, methinks, sweet babe! if I should kneel And worship thee for thy meek innocence,
I less should err than Egypt's white-swathed priest, Who bade the prostrate toiling race adore
The one great life incarnate in the bull,
Ibis, or cat, monkey or crocodile,—
More wisely sin than did the Persian sage,
Who held that God enshrined His majesty
In the huge mass of the insensate sun,
That loves not when it warms.
In thee do we behold a symbol meet
For joyous love and reverential musing;
Symbol of all that God through Nature gives
To sight, and touch, imparted and reveal'd
But more thou art for hope and holier love-
For self-assuring faith, thou art far more
Than any sweet and fair similitude
Which sense most exquisite could match with thee;
For hopeful love, that loving thy wee self,
Loves yet in thee a future nobler being,
A Christian maid, maybe a Christian mother;
For Faith, that in the utmost thou canst be
To mortal sight, though good thou wert, and holy
As that dear maiden-mother of her Lord,
Sees but a seed, a type unrealised,
Not what thou art or shalt be, though the prayer Of parent's heart were answer'd full in thee,
But as all Christ's beloved shall behold
Each other in the clearness of His day,
When child and parent, husband, wife, the king,
And lowly subject, scholar and untaught,
The babe that drew but once its breath on earth
And the grey chronicle of ninety years,
Shall meet together in one family,
Coeval children of the one great Sire.
Ascension Day, May 20, 1841.
TO THE SAME, ON HER FIRST BIRTHDAY.
"Tis right the joyous epoch of thy birth
Should be a sunshine holyday on earth;
All Nature keeps it now the boisterous North
Holds his chill breath; the birds are peeping forth,
Sweet little things, but yet not half so sweet
As thou, sweet flow'ret of a year complete!
I would, my babe, that prayer of force divine,
Or dedicated task, or vow of mine
To be perform'd, or suffer'd, as of old
Sad saint endured, or errant champion bold
Achieved on Syrian plains or Alpine passes cold-
That any work more meet for solemn time,
More grave and arduous than the easy rhyme
Which now, my love, 'tis well enough I can
Make faster far than many a wiser man-
Could gain for thee the moment of a bliss,
Were it no longer than a raptured kiss,
Or spare thy little life the pelting pain.
That soon is past, but comes too soon again.
But vain the vow-the very wish is vain.
The heaviest cross that mortal can assume,
The cavern'd saint's long life of martyrdom,
The knees that leave their dints on convent stone,
The breath that is but one perpetual groan,
Are useless all one pause of peace to win:
No pain of man can expiate a sin.
But wherefore dream of what I fain would do,
Or prate of pain beneath a sky so blue?
"Tis Spring with Nature-tender Spring with thee, But the sere Autumn follows hard on me.
It may be, pretty babe, ere thou canst know
The man that loves thee, and be-rhymes thee so,
I may be gone, and never see thee more;
But shall I see thee on the farther shore,
Clad in thine infant robes of innocence,
Pure even as now, baptised from all offence,
A spirit mature-yet with no more to fear
Than the sweet infant of a single year.
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