POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION. 293 Our varying moods, on human kind or brute, There are to whom the garden, grove, and field Who would not lightly violate the grace Which nothing less than Infinite Power could give. 1829. XXXII. THE unremitting voice of nightly streams, Nor unto silent leaves and drowsy flowers, That voice of unpretending harmony (For who what is shall measure by what seems To be, or not to be, Or tax high Heaven with prodigality?) Wants not a healing influence that can creep To regulate the motion of our dreams For kindly issues, as through every clime Was felt near murmuring brooks in earliest time, As at this day, the rudest swains who dwell Where torrents roar, or hear the tinkling knel Of water-breaks, with grateful heart could tell. 1840. XXXIII. THOUGHTS ON THE SEASONS. FLATTERED with promise of escape Less fair is Summer riding high In fierce solstitial power, When earth repays with golden sheaves And ripening fruits and forest leaves What pensive beauty Autumn shows, Of Winter rushing in, to close Such be our Spring, our Summer such; With hoary Winter, and Life touch, 1829. XXXIV. ΤΟ UPON THE BIRTH OF HER FIRST-BORN CHILD, MARCH, 1823 "Tum porro puer, ut sævis projectus ab undis LIKE a shipwrecked Sailor tost And in tenderest nakedness, no more Than the hands are free to implore: But, O Mother! by the close Duly granted to thy throes; By the silent thanks, now tending Incense-like to Heaven, descending Now to mingle and to move With the gush of earthly love, As a debt to that frail Creature, Instrument of struggling Nature For the blissful calm, the peace Known but to this one release,Can the pitying spirit doubt That for human kind springs out From the penalty a sense Of more than mortal recompense? As a floating summer cloud, Ofttimes makes its bounty known That has power to baffle death, And, sweet Mother! under warran' Of the Universal Parent, Who repays in season due Them who have, like thee, been true This thy First-born, and with tears Mother! blest be thy calm ease; Blest the starry promises, And the firmament benign, Hallowed be it, where they shine. Yes, for them whose souls have scope Ample for a wingèd hope, And can earthward bend an ear For needful listening, pledge is nere, That, if thy new-born Charge shall tread In thy footsteps, and be led |