INFANT EYES
Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,
Heart of my being's heart,
Strange visitant, yet very son;
All this, and more, thou art.
In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother's face
Transfiguring my own.
That grave but all untroubled gaze,
So rapt yet never dim,
Seems following o'er their starry ways
The wings of cherubim.
Two worlds man hardly may descry,
(For manhood clouds them o'er),
Commingled to mine inward eye
Are shadowed forth once more:
That lost world, whither man's regret
With fictive fancy turns;
That world to come, where brighter yet
The star of promise burns.
Time and his weary offspring Care
Fade in that gaze away;
One moment mystically fair
Lives on, one timeless day.
Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,
Heart of my being's heart,
Strange visitant, yet very son;
All this, and more, thou art.
In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother's face
Transfiguring my own.
That grave but all untroubled gaze,
So rapt yet never dim,
Seems following o'er their starry ways
The wings of cherubim.
Two worlds man hardly may descry,
(For manhood clouds them o'er),
Commingled to mine inward eye
Are shadowed forth once more:
That lost world, whither man's regret
With fictive fancy turns;
That world to come, where brighter yet
The star of promise burns.
Time and his weary offspring Care
Fade in that gaze away;
One moment mystically fair
Lives on, one timeless day.