THE FOURTH BIRTHDAY.

FOUR years, long years, and full of strange event To thee, sweet boy, though brief and bare to me, Of thy young days make up the complement,

And far out-date thy little memory.

How many tears have dropp'd since thou wert born,
Some on the cradle, some upon the grave!

Yet having thee, thy father, not forlorn,
Felt he had something yet of God to crave.

For who hath aught to love, and loves aright,
Will never in the darkest strait despair;
For out of love exhales a living light,

A light that speaks-a light whose breath is prayer.

Sorrow hath been within thy dwelling, child,

Yet sorrow hath not touch'd thy delicate bloom; So, the low floweret in Arabian wild

Grows in the sand, nor fades in the simoom.

What thou hast lost thou know'st not, canst not know,

Too young to wonder when thy elders moan; Thou haply think'st that adult eyes can flow With tears as quick and transient as thine own.

The swift adoption of an infant's love

Gives to thy heart all infant hearts require;
Unfelt by thee, the mortal shaft that clove
In twain thy duty, left thy love entire.

Ne'er be thy birthday as a day unblest,

Which thou or thine might wish had never been; But in thine age, a quiet day of rest,

A sabbath, holy, thoughtful, and serene.

Soul! never say the soul is not

In thing that does not think;

No thought hast thou, sweet thing, I wot, When thy thin eyelids wink.

The soul is life, the life that lives,

And shall exist for aye;
And buzzes 'mid the million hives

That swarm out every day.

In every man, in every babe,

Beneath the spacious cope,

Where eastern wight with astrolabe

Might take the horoscope.

TO DEAR LITTLE KATY HILL.

OFT have I conn'd, in merry mood or grave,

For

many a babe a sad or merry stave,

In merry love of softly smiling baby,

Or love subdued by fear of what it may be.
But then all babies are so much alike,
'Twere easier far to single out a spike,
The fairest spike in all a field of barley;
Or mid the drops of dew that late or early
Shine to the rising or the setting sun,
To mark and memorise a single one;
In a long bank to find the violet

That is, or should be, Flora's own dear pet;
To stamp a signet on the sweetest note
That spins itself in Philomela's throat;
The very whitest spot of all to show
In a flat ocean of untainted snow;
The blackest spot of utter dark to tell,
Or do aught else which is impossible,