| |
| DEAR babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, | |
| Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, | |
| Fill up the interspersèd vacancies | |
| And momentary pauses of the thought; | |
| My babe so beautiful, it thrills my heart | 5 |
| With tender gladness thus to look at thee, | |
| And think that thou shalt learn far other lore | |
| And in far other scenes! For I was reared | |
| In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, | |
| And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. | 10 |
| But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze | |
| By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags | |
| Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds | |
| Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores | |
| And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear | 15 |
| The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible | |
| Of that eternal language, which thy God | |
| Utters, who from eternity doth teach | |
| Himself in all, and all things in Himself. | |
| Great universal Teacher, He shall mould | 20 |
| Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. | |
| Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, | |
| Whether the summer clothe the general earth | |
| With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing | |
| Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch | 25 |
| Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch | |
| Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall | |
| Heard only in the trances of the blast, | |
| Or if the secret ministry of frost | |
| Shall hang them up in silent icicles, | 30 |
| Quietly shining to the quiet moon. | |
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