| |
| FOR the first time a lovely scene | |
| Earth saw and smiled, | |
| A gentle form with pallid mien | |
| Bending o’er a new-born child; | |
| The pang, the anguish, and the woe | 5 |
| That speech hath never told, | |
| Fled, as the sun with noontide glow | |
| Dissolves the snow-wreath cold, | |
| Leaving the bliss that none but mothers know; | |
| While he, the partner of her heaven-taught joy | 10 |
| Knelt in adoring praise beside his beauteous boy. | |
| She, first of all our mortal race, | |
| Learn’d the ecstasy to trace | |
| The expanding form of infant grace | |
| From her own life-spring fed; | 15 |
| To mark each radiant hour, | |
| Heaven’s sculpture still more perfect growing, | |
| More full of power; | |
| |
| The little foot’s elastic tread, | |
| The rounded cheek, like rose-bud glowing, | 20 |
| The fringèd eye with gladness flowing | |
| As the pure, blue fountains roll; | |
| And then those lisping sounds to hear, | |
| Unfolding to her thrilling ear | |
| The strange, mysterious, never-dying soul, | 25 |
| And with delight intense | |
| To watch the angel-smile of sleeping innocence. | |
| |
| No more she mourned lost Eden’s joy, | |
| Or wept her cherish’d flowers, | |
| In their primeval bowers | 30 |
| By wrecking tempests riven; | |
| The thorn and thistle of the exile’s lot | |
| She heeded not. | |
| So all-absorbing was her sweet employ | |
| To rear the incipient man, the gift her God had given. | 35 |
| |
| And when his boyhood bold | |
| A richer beauty caught, | |
| Her kindling glance of pleasure told | |
| The incense of her idol-thought; | |
| Not for the born of clay | 40 |
| Is pride’s exulting thrill, | |
| Dark herald of the downward way, | |
| And ominous of ill. | |
| Even his cradled brother’s smile | |
| The haughty first-born jealously survey’d | 45 |
| And envy marked the brow with hate and guile, | |
| In God’s own image made. | |
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