Part 1 — TO LITTLE RENEE ON FIRST SEEING HER LYING IN HER CRADLE
Reading edition
Who is she here that now I see, This dainty new divinity, Love's sister, Venus' child? She shows Her hues, white lily and pink rose, And in her laughing eyes the snares That hearts entangle unawares. Ah, woe to men if Love should yield His arrows to this girl to wield Even in play, for she would give Sore wounds that none might take and live. Yet no such wanton strain is hers, Nor Leda's child and Jupiter's Is she, though swans no softer are Than whom she fairer is by far. For she was born beside the rill That gushes from Parnassus' hill, And by the bright Pierian spring She shall receive an offering From every youth who pipes a strain Beside his flocks upon the plain. But I, the first, this very day, Will tune for her my humble lay, Invoking this new Muse to render My oaten reed more sweet and tender, Within its vibrant hollows wake Such dulcet voices for her sake As, curved hand at straining ear, I long have stood and sought to hear Borne with the warm midsummer breeze With scent of hay and hum of bees Faintly from far-off Sicily....
Ah, well I know that not for us Are Virgil and Theocritus, And that the golden age is past Whereof they sang, and thou, the last, Sweet Spenser, of their god-like line, Soar far too swift for verse of mine One strain to compass of your song. Yet there are poets that prolong Of your rare voice the ravishment In silver cadences; content Were I if I could but rehearse One stave of Wither's starry verse, Weave such wrought richness as recalls Britannia's lovely Pastorals, Or in some garden-spot suspire One breath of Marvell's magic fire When in the green and leafy shade He sees dissolving all that's made. Ah, little Muse still far too high On weak, clipped wings my wishes fly. Transform them then and make them doves, Soft-moaning birds that Venus loves, That they may circle ever low Above the abode where you shall grow Into your gracious womanhood. And you shall feed the gentle brood From out your hand—content they'll be Only to coo their songs to thee.
William Aspenwall Bradley [1878-