A little soul of five brief years,
On life’s great arm, as on his mother’s breast,
In April moods that mingle smiles and tears,
Careless of care and fearless of our fears,
Feels the warm heart of Being throb with his –
A fire and force in all his arteries –
And heeds not, knows not if it be his own,
Or the warm life that buzzes in the bees,
And burns in flowers and flamy autumn trees –
Content to be, and trusting the unknown,
As if all nature served his moods alone.
For him to-morrow is as vague and far
As vast eternity, and the polar star
Near as the little lamp whose faint ray peeps
From the dim cottage where his playmate sleeps;
Yet his creative fancy builds
In o that vast to-morrow trustfully
As the blind polyp in the boundless sea.
From the unrisen sun a glory gilds
His airy castles, and a destiny
Rooted in some far past hangs over him
A spectral future where, on branches dim,
Wave golden fruits, and blossoms white and pure,
That for their filmy forms the more allure.
How may his little fingers grasp a clue
Beyond his arm’s length? Whence his vision true,
Before experience racks his sunny head?
Ah, sooth! the enigma’s word is said,
When any thoughtful soul can tell
Why the fur catkins on the willow swell
Before the winter snows have fled:
Or how the ice-bound maple, blushing red,
Knows and reveals as well,
When the far May forsakes her tropic bed
To wake the nor’land forests from the dead,
And calls her blooming maidens – Asphodel,
Violet and Iris and shy Pimpernel –
Out of their long, long sleep,
As a fair shepherdess calls her lagging sheep.
Ah, see you not that every vital thing
Folds in its future as a bud,
And all its yearnings prophecy the spring
That shoots from far a tingling through its blood?
Unconscious forms surrender all their life
To the deep tide of being, and are borne
Forward to fair completion. Wills at strife
With the creative purpose, bent or torn,
Struggle and fail till, breathless and outworn,
They sink to rest, and wake to love and trust,
Even as a captive bird, when yield it must,
Sinks panting, and refolds its ruffled wings;
Feeds from the captor’s hand, confides at last, and sings!
The life that is at rest in natural faith
On the great Mother’s heart, feels every breath
In its small bosom a wait of that which heaves
Her ocean breast and murmurs in the leaves,
Its every pulse-beat a responsive jar
Of the vast throbs that thrill the farthest star!
