Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Sara Coleridge. 18021850661. O sleep, my Babe
O SLEEP, my babe, hear not the rippling wave, | |
Nor feel the breeze that round thee ling’ring strays | |
To drink thy balmy breath, | |
And sigh one long farewell. | |
Soon shall it mourn above thy wat’ry bed, | 5 |
And whisper to me, on the wave-beat shore, | |
Deep murm’ring in reproach, | |
Thy sad untimely fate. | |
Ere those dear eyes had open’d on the light, | |
In vain to plead, thy coming life was sold, | 10 |
O waken’d but to sleep, | |
Whence it can wake no more! | |
A thousand and a thousand silken leaves | |
The tufted beech unfolds in early spring, | |
All clad in tenderest green, | 15 |
All of the self-same shape: | |
A thousand infant faces, soft and sweet, | |
Each year sends forth, yet every mother views | |
Her last not least beloved | |
Like its dear self alone. | 20 |
No musing mind hath ever yet foreshaped | |
The face to-morrow’s sun shall first reveal, | |
No heart hath e’er conceived | |
What love that face will bring. | |
O sleep, my babe, nor heed how mourns the gale | 25 |
To part with thy soft locks and fragrant breath, | |
As when it deeply sighs | |
O’er autumn’s latest bloom. |