INFANT FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD.
“Hid from the wise and prudent ------ revealed unto
babes.”—Matt. xi. 25.
Mysterious infant! on thy fairy brow
A far-off glory seems reflected now,
A pensive, mild, and melancholy ray
Like the last hue of heaven's most lovely day;
Thou living harebell! 'mong the human flowers
Which bud and blossom in domestic bowers,
The liquid azure of thy placid eye
Gleams like the softness of a vernal sky:
Feeble to sense and sight indeed thou art,
But oh! within thee dwells a mighty Heart,
Capacious of eternity, and God,
E'en now, before the travell'd earth is trod.
Fragile the organs that connect thy soul
With those blent world-scenes, which our own control;
But let not creedless Science this declare,—
That God and angels are unvision'd there.
Souls in pure essence are, like grace, unknown;
For all we hear is but the outward tone,
A broken echo of a voice within
Muffled by earth, and jarr'd by jangling sin:
But if The Spirit must a soul renew
Ere glory open on its blissful view,
Then must the babe unbreathed communion hold
And have with Heaven some intercourse untold.
Sinless in fact, untempted babes depart
To where, O Christ, ensphered in bliss Thou art;
And ere time's language to their lips is known,
They learn The Cross before salvation's throne.
And who remembers not some deep-eyed child,
Unearthly, pale, and exquisitely mild,
Purer than chisell'd alabaster shines
Where sculptured poesy hath traced its lines?
But 'tis not beauty, delicate and bright,
Nor limbs elastic as incarnate light,
Nor that seraphic grace of brow and cheek
More eloquent of mind, than words can speak:
'Tis something finer than all beauty far,
Tender as dreams beneath a twilight-star;
A heaven-like stamp of saintliness which glows
O'er each calm feature in its chaste repose.
And who denies, prophetic babes may see
Secrets and Shapes which throng eternity,
Visions of glory, such as elder man
Has never imaged in the course he ran?
A wordless infant in some mystic hour
May have The Spirit in His deeper power,
Converse with angels, and in God behold
Truths which heroic Saints have never told.
The tearful radiance of a baby's eye,
The pleading music of its pensive sigh,
The looks that seem so spiritually deep
Turn'd on beholders, till they almost weep,
May be the symbols of a faded heaven
To infants in angelic slumber given,
Which leaves them, when they face the world again,
In dim remembrance and in dawning pain.
And none can tell, but hov'ring babes above
To babes on earth may whisper tones of love,
Melodious fragments of cherubic song
On Glory's breeze for ever borne along.
And, childless mother! let a thought like this
Becalm thy bosom with sustaining bliss,—
When thy pale infant heaved the parting sigh
Some Angel bore it to the peopled sky.
Bright from the waters of baptismal life,
Stain'd by no sin, nor touch'd by earth-born strife,
Straight to its God thy sinless babe hath flown
And join'd the myriads which enwreathe His Throne.
