INFANTS AND INFANCY.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast
perfected praise.”—Matt. xxi. 16.
The dew-drop, in whose mirror lies
A miniature of morning skies;
The violet-bud which blooms in spring,
The flower-bee on its fairy wing,
The broken lisp of some shy brook
That babbles in a shady nook,
All that is fragile, coy, and fair,
As types of beauty, may declare
The cherub-loveliness that seems
To mantle those embodied dreams,
Sweet infants! when their baby forms
Come forth to face life's gloomy storms.
Oh! I can watch, and almost weep
To view some angel-child asleep;
To mark the alabaster brow
Where sinless calm is brooding now,
Or see the silken fringe that lies
And covers its innocuous eyes.
So have I stood, and heard each breath
Like music in melodious death,
And soft and slow it swells and heaves,
And at each fall such cadence leaves,
As may to pious fancy seem
A sigh for Glory in its dream.
There is a purity which plays
In the quick gleam of infant's gaze,
That innocence of heaven-born light
Which beams for vulgar sense too bright,—
A lustrous depth whose dazzling spells
Are richer than the blue gazelle's.
'Tis now the budding dawn of mind,
Ere the worn heart grows weak and blind;
The orient blush of radiant thought
Ere life is with those shadows fraught
Experience unto manhood brings,
Or sorrow round cold memory flings!
To see them in glad sunbeams play
As bounding and as bright as they,
Or, like young wavelets laugh and sing,
Or romp like breezes wild of wing
Exulting over fields and flowers,
When May-time leads the lovely hours,—
Oh, this can melt the heart, and make
Maturer life new colours take,
A sentiment of vernal hue,
Which softens down each sterner view
Till Age becomes a child again,
Encircled by some infant train!
But yet, a holier chain there is,
The glory of maternal bliss,
When first the blossom'd mind is heard,
In pretty lisp and prattled word,
While, peering through a curious eye,
It longs to measure earth and sky.
And, beautiful beyond compare
An infant kneeling down to prayer!
When, lifting up its little hands,
The soul beyond the age expands,
And, touch'd by God's baptismal grace,
Adores bright Merey face to face.
And Infancy hath inward speech,
A mental life, man cannot reach;
For, intercourse of grace may be
Between a babe and Deity,
Too rapt and raised for oral sign,
And deeper than our thoughts divine.
There's something holy in a child,
Ere yet by darken'd years defiled,
When lip, and brow, and cheek declare
'Tis fit for Jesu's arms in prayer;
And when to God and glory given,
Though born on earth, it breathes of heaven.
