Eve

FOR the first time a lovely scene

Earth saw and smiled,

A gentle form with pallid mien

Bending o’er a new-born child;

The pang, the anguish, and the woe

That speech hath never told,

Fled, as the sun with noontide glow

Dissolves the snow-wreath cold,

Leaving the bliss that none but mothers know;

While he, the partner of her heaven-taught joy

Knelt in adoring praise beside his beauteous boy.

She, first of all our mortal race,

Learn’d the ecstasy to trace

The expanding form of infant grace

From her own life-spring fed;

To mark each radiant hour,

Heaven’s sculpture still more perfect growing,

More full of power;

The little foot’s elastic tread,

The rounded cheek, like rose-bud glowing,

The fringèd eye with gladness flowing

As the pure, blue fountains roll;

And then those lisping sounds to hear,

Unfolding to her thrilling ear

The strange, mysterious, never-dying soul,

And with delight intense

To watch the angel-smile of sleeping innocence.

No more she mourned lost Eden’s joy,

Or wept her cherish’d flowers,

In their primeval bowers

By wrecking tempests riven;

The thorn and thistle of the exile’s lot

She heeded not.

So all-absorbing was her sweet employ

To rear the incipient man, the gift her God had given.

And when his boyhood bold

A richer beauty caught,

Her kindling glance of pleasure told

The incense of her idol-thought;

Not for the born of clay

Is pride’s exulting thrill,

Dark herald of the downward way,

And ominous of ill.

Even his cradled brother’s smile

The haughty first-born jealously survey’d

And envy marked the brow with hate and guile,

In God’s own image made.