Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834)To his Child
DEAR babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, | |
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, | |
Fill up the interspersèd vacancies | |
And momentary pauses of the thought; | |
My babe so beautiful, it thrills my heart | 5 |
With tender gladness thus to look at thee, | |
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore | |
And in far other scenes! For I was reared | |
In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, | |
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. | 10 |
But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze | |
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags | |
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds | |
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores | |
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear | 15 |
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible | |
Of that eternal language, which thy God | |
Utters, who from eternity doth teach | |
Himself in all, and all things in Himself. | |
Great universal Teacher, He shall mould | 20 |
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. | |
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, | |
Whether the summer clothe the general earth | |
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing | |
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch | 25 |
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch | |
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall | |
Heard only in the trances of the blast, | |
Or if the secret ministry of frost | |
Shall hang them up in silent icicles, | 30 |
Quietly shining to the quiet moon. | |