Chapter 77 of 78

To My God-Child, On The Day Of His Baptism.

TO MY GOD-CHILD,

ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

No harsh transitions Nature knows,

No dreary spaces intervene;

Her work in silence forward goes,

And rather felt than seen.

For where the watcher, that with eye

Turned eastward, yet could ever say

When the faint glooming in the sky

First lightened into day?

Or maiden, by an opening flower

That many a summer morn has stood,

Could fix upon the very hour

It ceased to be a bud?

The rainbow colours mix and blend

Each with the other, until none

Can tell where fainter hues had end,

And deeper tints begun.

But only doth this much appear—

That the pale hues are deeper grown;

The day has broken bright and clear;

The bud is fully blown.

Dear child, and happy shalt thou be,

If from this hour, with just increase

All good things shall grow up in thee,

By such unmarked degrees.

If there shall be no dreary space

Between thy present self and past,

No dreary miserable place

With spectral shapes aghast;

But the full graces of thy prime

Shall, in their weak beginnings, be

Lost in an unremembered time

Of holy infancy.

This blessing is the first and best;

Yet has not prayer been made in vain

For them, tho’ not so amply blest,

The lost and found again.

And shouldest thou, alas! forbear

To choose the better, nobler lot,

Yet may we not esteem our prayer

Unheard or heeded not;

If after many a wandering,

And many a devious pathway trod;

If having known that bitter thing,

To leave the Lord thy God,

It yet shall be, that thou at last,

Altho’ thy noon be lost, return

To bind life’s eve in union fast

To this, its blessed morn.