University of Virginia Library

SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS REFERRING TO THE PERIOD OF INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.

CHILDHOOD.

Oh what a wilderness were this sad world
If man were always man, and never child;
If Nature gave no time, so sweetly wild,
When every thought is deftly crisped and curled,
Like fragrant hyacinth with dew impearled,
And every feeling in itself confiding,
Yet never single, but continuous, gliding
With wavy motion as, on wings unfurled,
A seraph clips Empyreal! Such man was
Ere sin had made him know himself too well.
No child was born ere that primeval loss.
What might have been, no living soul can tell:
But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess
Once in their life fair Eden's simpleness.

TO AN INFANT.

Wise is the way of Nature, first to make
This tiny model of what is to be,
A thing that we may love as soon as see,
That seems as passive as a summer lake
When there is not a sigh of wind to shake
The aspen leaf upon the tall slim tree.
Yet who can tell, sweet infant mystery,
What thoughts in thee may now begin to wake?
Something already dost thou know of pain,
And, sinless, bear'st the penalty of sin;
And yet as quickly wilt thou smile again
After thy cries, as vanishes the stain
Of breath from steel. So may the peace within
In thy ripe season re-assert its reign.

TO AN INFANT.

Sure 'tis a holy and a healing thought
That fills my heart and mind at sight of thee,
Thou purest abstract of humanity.
Sweet infant, we might deem thy smile was brought
From some far distant Paradise, where nought
Forbad to hope whate'er of good may be,
Where thou could'st know, and feel, and trust, and see
That innocence which, lost, is vainly sought
In this poor world. Yet, if thou wert so good
As love conceives thee, thou hadst ne'er been born;
For sure the Lord of Justice never would
Have doomed a loyal spirit to be shorn
Of its immortal glories—never could
Exile perfection to an earth forlorn.

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 unsunned 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 lovely as a trance,
Doomed 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 claims of grace;
That sacred sign which time shall not efface
Declared thee His, to whom all angels bow,
Who bade the herald saints 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 unstained with sin or care
Shall never blossom from the fertile tomb;—
Twin flowers that wasted not on earth their bloom,
So quickly Heaven reclaimed the spotless pair.
Let man that on his own desert relies,
And deems himself the creditor of God,
Think how these babes have earned 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 impressed 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.

To K. H. I.

THE INFANT GRANDCHILD OF A BLIND GRANDFATHER

Oh sweet new-comer to the changeful earth!
If, as some darkling seers have boldly guessed,
Thou hadst a being and a human birth,
And wert erewhile by human parents blest,
Long, long before thy present mother pressed
Thee, helpless stranger, to her fostering breast;
Then well it is for thee that thou canst not
Remember aught of face, or thing, or spot,
But all thy former life is clean forgot:
For sad it were to visit earth again,
And find it false, and turbulent, and vain;
So little better than it was of yore,
Yet nothing find that thou hast loved before;
And restless man in haste to banish thence
The very shadow of old reverence.
But well for us that there is something yet,
Which change cannot efface, nor time forget;—
The patient smile of passive babyhood,
The brook-like gurglings, murmuring after meaning,
The waking dream, the shade as softly screening
The innocent sweetness of the opening bud,
Which future love and sager thought encloses,
As dewy moss, that swathes the swelling roses,
Till thought peers forth, and murmurs break to words,
With human import in the notes of birds.
And thus sweet maid! thy voice, so blithe and clear,
Pours all the spring on thy good grandsire's ear,
Filling his kind heart with a new delight,
Which Homer may in ancient days have known,
Till love and joy create an inward sight,
And blindness shapes a fair world of its own.
Let mutability, then, work its will,
The child shall be the same sweet creature still.

[Thou, Baby Innocence!—unseen of me]

[Fain would I dive to find my infant self]

ON AN INFANT'S HAND.

What is an infant but a germ,
Prophetic of a distant term?
Whose present claim of love consists
In that great power that Nature twists
With the fine thread of imbecility,
Motion of infinite tranquillity.
Joy that is not for this or that,
Nor like the restless joy of gnat,
Or insect in the beam so rife,
Whose day of pleasure is its life;
But joy that by its quiet being
Is witness of a law foreseeing
All joy and sorrow that may hap
To the wee sleeper in the mother's lap.
Such joy, I ween, is ever creeping
On every nerve of baby sleeping;
But, baby waking, longest lingers
In tiny hand and tiny fingers,
[Like lamp beside sepulchral urn,
Much teaching that it ne'er did learn,
Revealing by felicity,
Foretelling by simplicity,
And preaching by its sudden cries,
Alone with God the baby lies.]
How hard it holds!—how tight the clasp!
Ah, how intense the infant grasp!
Electric from the ruling brains
The will descends and stirs and strains
That wondrous instrument, the hand,
By which we learn to understand,
How fair, how small, how white and pure,
Its own most perfect miniature.
The baby-hand that is so wee,
And yet is all it is to be;
Unweeting what it has to do,
Yet to its destined purpose true.
The fingers four, of varied length,
That join or vie their little strength;
The pigmy thumb, the onyx nail,
The violet vein so blue and pale;
The branchy lines where Gipsy eld
Had all the course of life beheld:
All, to its little finger's tip,
Of Nature's choicest workmanship.
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 Sabbath interspersed,
And not the busiest day the worst.
Not doomed, 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.

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 performed, or suffered, as of old
Sad saints 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 caverned 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 yet 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

TO MARGARET, ON HER FIRST BIRTHDAY.

One year is past, with change and sorrow fraught,
Since first the little Margaret drew her breath,
And yet the fatal names of Sin and Death,
Her sad inheritance, she knoweth not.
That lore, by earth inevitably taught,
In the still world of spirits is untold;
'Tis not of Death or Sin that angels hold
Sweet converse with the slumb'ring infant's thought.
Merely she is with God, and God with her
And her meek ignorance. Guiltless of demur,
For her is faith a hope; her innocence
Is holiness: the bright-eyed crowing glee
That makes her leap her grandsire's face to see,
Is love unfeigned and willing reverence.

THE FOURTH BIRTHDAY.

THE INFANT'S SOUL.

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,
Than to explain to each expectant mother
How her sweet thing is sweeter than another.
So ancient fathers deemed, and wisely deemed,
Or, if not so, yet beautifully dreamed,
At the last day, the day of wrath and love,
The cherished nestlings of the mystic dove
Shall spring from earth and meet the promised skies
All in one shape, one feature, and one size,
Welcome alike before the Almighty throne,
Each in the Saviour's likeness, not its own,
Alike all blessed, and alike all fair,
And only God remember who they were.
Yet love on earth will always make or find
(They saw but ill who said that Love was blind)
In things most like a lovely difference,
Distinguish innocence from innocence.
And lynx-eyed Love, my little Catherine,
Perceives a self in that smooth brow of thine:
Thy small sweet mouth, with speechless meaning rife,
Moves hopes and smiles with something more than life:
The lucid whiteness of the flower-soft skin,
Transparent, shows a wakening soul within,
That ever and anon peeps through those eyes,
Soft as the tenderest light of vernal skies,
Blue as the shadow of the halcyon's breast,
On the calm waves herself has lulled to rest;
Informed with light, by turns revealed and hid
By gentle movement of the dewy lid:
E'en in the quivering of thy little hands
A spirit lives and almost understands.
Oh, may each omen of thy form and hue,
The lamb's pure white, the clear and hopeful blue,
The gracious blending of unbroken lines,
Which thy round shape continuously combines,
Portend the blended graces of a soul
Whose various virtues form a virtuous whole!

TO CHRISTABEL ROSE COLERIDGE.

Nature and Fortune, and the doom severe
Of my own faults, forbid me to desire
The bliss of fathers seated by the fire;
Happy to know their darlings all are near,
Happy the crowing note of babe to hear,
Happy with lads that, restless to inquire,
Ask curious questions that might tease and tire
Aught less affectionate than parent's ear.
Yet though the name of uncle, in the mind
Of childhood, be with horrid deeds combined
Of bloody Richard, and that covetous man
That left the poor babes in the wildering wood,
I would be Uncle Toby if I could,
Or Oliver returned from Hindostan.
Sweet Christabel, that hath a lovely name
That would the sweetest thing commemorate
That ever poet dreamed, be not thy fate
Like hers, to tremble with a faultless shame!
Oh, may no act of thine provoke the blame
Which, least deserved, is ever keenest felt!
Thine innocent flesh, that softest touch can melt,
May never worldly thought or speech defame!
But in the world thou must be incomplete,
For who of Christabel can close the story?—
The name, sweet child, it is an omen meet
Of all that earth bestows of good and glory.
May'st thou for aye in love and fancy dwell
Like thy good grandsire's lovely Christabel!

PRIMITIÆ.

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY.

LINES, WRITTEN IN A BIBLE PRESENTED BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS GODCHILD.

'Tis little I can give thee now,
And less that I shall leave;
Yet this small present, as I trow,
Is, in acquittance of my vow,
The very best
That could attest
My anxious love
For thee, sweet Dove,
The best thou canst receive.