Poems (Frances Elizabeth Browne)/On the birth of an infant
ON THE BIRTH OF AN INFANT.
Welcome, my darling, to thy mother's heart,—A gift from God, a precious trust, thou art;A soul confided to thy parent's care,To train for heaven and Christ's blest mansion there.
Like Moses in his ark of reeds and mud,Thy fragile bark floats on a troubled flood,Launched on the waves of this world's stormy tide,More dangerous than Egyptia's waters wide.
But the same God who interposed to save,And snatched him from the Nile's o'erwhelming wave,—That providence which Pharaoh's daughter sent,And to her heart his tears made eloquent,
His fate o'erruled, and He whose word can saveCaused her to draw him from his watery grave,And take him for her own,—that Hebrew boyWhom cruel Pharaoh's mandate would destroy,—
That providence, my babe, can shelter theeFrom all the storms of life's tempestuous sea,And bear thee safely to that happy shoreWhere all its waves and storms can reach no more.