XIV. To H. C., SIX YEARS OLD. O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought; Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; Thou faery Voyager! that dost float In such clear water, that thy Boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; O blessed Vision! happy Child! That art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many fears For what may be thy lot in future years. If we are 7 I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy Lover! never rest But when she sate within the touch of thee. Oh! too industrious folly! Oh! vain and causeless melancholy! Nature will either end thee quite; Or, lengthening out thy season of delight, Preserve for thee, by individual right, A young Lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks. Or the injuries of to-morrow? Thou art a Dew-drop, which the morn brings forth, Not framed to undergo unkindly shocks; Or to be trailed along the soiling earth; A gem that glitters while it lives, And no forewarning gives; But, at the touch of wrong, without a strife Slips in a moment out of life. XV. INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS In calling forth and strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and early Youth; From an unpublished Poem. (This Extract is reprinted from "THE FRIEND.") WISDOM and Spirit of the Universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!. By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn The elements of feeling and of thought, Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and, visible for many a mile, The cottage windows through the twilight blazed, I heeded not the summons:-happy time It was indeed for all of us; for me It was a time of rapture!-Clear and loud The village clock tolled six-I wheeled about, That cares not for its home.--All shod with steel We hissed along the polished ice, in Confederate, imitative of the Chase games And woodland pleasures,-the resounding horn, Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, Not seldom from the uproar I retired Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, That gleamed upon the ice and oftentimes, And all the shadowy banks on either side |