OME to your poor old Mother,” she said
Smiling, and gathered to her breast
With her good hands her baby’s head;
But the child’s eyes looked out oppressed.
“Not old—not old—it isn’t true!
Everyone may be old but you.”
Old?—Old, you see, is much too near
The half-imagined thing that takes
Our Mothers where they do not hear
Even when their baby wakes
And cries for comfort in the gloom—
Babies to cry, and Mothers not come!
Within the safe arms round her curled,
“Oh,” she half sobbed, “I wish you’d be
The youngest person in the world—
How old are you? not old?” begged she,
And caught a little panting breath,
Then lay quite still and thought of death.
A CHRISTENING.
HIS day we are met to set a name
On thy mysterious dust and flame,
That in the years to follow, when
Thy feet shall walk the ways of men,
Thou mayst according to his plan
Be known thereby to man.
O being undiscoverable!
Thy name thyself will never spell.
Whate’er thou art, whate’er wilt be,
Man’s tongue will never utter thee;
Towering upon thy inmost throne
Thou shalt of none be known.
We watch in wonder how thy brow
Grows strange and silent in sleep, and how
Even more silent and more strange
Thy waking is that brings no change
When thy dim dreams of slumber press
To dimmer dreamlessness.
But looking with a love that seems
To pierce thy undiscovered dreams,
Within thy small unfolded being
Some dream of our own making seeing,
“All that she feels and dreams,” we say,
“We too will know one day.”