Poems by Hartley Coleridge With a Memoir of his Life by his Brother. In Two Volumes |
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TO JEANNETTE, SIX WEEKS OLD. |
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 | Poems by Hartley Coleridge |  |
131
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.
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
132
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.
Yes, boby dear!
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 revealed.
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 answered 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,
Coëval children of the one great Sire.
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 revealed.
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,
133
Of parent's heart were answered 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,
Coëval children of the one great Sire.
| Poems by Hartley Coleridge | |