TO MY GOD-CHILD, ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

No harsh transitions Nature knows, No dreary spaces intervene; Her work in silence forward goes, And rather felt than seen. For where the watcher, that with eye Turned eastward, yet could ever say When the faint glooming in the sky First lightened into day? Or maiden, by an opening flower That many a summer morn has stood, Could fix upon the very hour It ceased to be a bud? The rainbow colours mix and blend Each with the other, until none Can tell where fainter hues had end, And deeper tints begun. But only doth this much appear— That the pale hues are deeper grown; The day has broken bright and clear; The bud is fully blown. Dear child, and happy shalt thou be, If from this hour, with just increase All good things shall grow up in thee, By such unmarked degrees. If there shall be no dreary space Between thy present self and past, No dreary miserable place With spectral shapes aghast; But the full graces of thy prime Shall, in their weak beginnings, be Lost in an unremembered time Of holy infancy. This blessing is the first and best; Yet has not prayer been made in vain For them, tho’ not so amply blest, The lost and found again. And shouldest thou, alas! forbear To choose the better, nobler lot, Yet may we not esteem our prayer Unheard or heeded not; If after many a wandering, And many a devious pathway trod; If having known that bitter thing, To leave the Lord thy God, It yet shall be, that thou at last, Altho’ thy noon be lost, return To bind life’s eve in union fast To this, its blessed morn.