The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems/To a Child
For works with similar titles, see To a Child.
TO A CHILD.
Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,Thou gazest at the painted tiles,Whose figures grace,With many a grotesque form and face,The ancient chimney of thy nursery!The lady with the gay macaw,The dancing girl, the grave bashawWith bearded lip and chin;And, leaning idly o'er his gate, Beneath the imperial fan of state,The Chinese mandarin.
With what a look of proud commandThou shakest in thy little handThe coral rattle with its silver bells,Making a merry tune!Thousands of years in Indian seasThat coral grew, by slow degrees,Until some deadly and wild monsoonDashed it on Coromandel's sand!Those silver bellsReposed of yore,As shapeless ore,Far down in the deep-sunken wellsOf darksome mines,In some obscure and sunless place,Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,Or steep Potosi's mountain pines! And thus for thee, O little child,Through many a danger and escape,The tall ships passed the stormy cape;For thee in foreign lands remote,Beneath a burning, tropic clime,The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,Himself as swift and wild,In falling, clutched the frail arbute,The fibres of whose shallow root,Uplifted from the soil, betrayedThe silver veins beneath it laid,The buried treasures of the miser, Time.
But, lo! thy door is left ajar!Thou hearest footsteps from afar!And, at the sound,Thou turnest roundWith quick and questioning eyes,Like one, who, in a foreign land, Beholds on every handSome source of wonder and surprise!And, restlessly, impatiently,Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.The four walls of thy nurseryAre now like prison walls to thee.No more thy mother's smiles,No more the painted tiles,Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,That won thy little, beating heart before;Thou strugglest for the open door.
Through these once solitary hallsThy pattering footstep falls.The sound of thy merry voiceMakes the old wallsJubilant, and they rejoiceWith the joy of thy young heart,O'er the light of whose gladness No shadows of sadnessFrom the sombre background of memory start.
Once, ah, once, within these walls,One whom memory oft recalls,The Father of his Country, dwelt.And yonder meadows broad and dampThe fires of the besieging campEncircled with a burning belt.Up and down these echoing stairs,Heavy with the weight of cares,Sounded his majestic tread;Yes, within this very roomSat he in those hours of gloom,Weary both in heart and head.
But what are these grave thoughts to thee?Out, out! into the open air!Thy only dream is liberty,Thou carest little how or where. I see thee eager at thy play,Now shouting to the apples on the tree,With cheeks as round and red as they;And now among the yellow stalks,Among the flowering shrubs and plants,As restless as the bee.Along the garden walks,The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace;And see at every turn how they effaceWhole villages of sand-roofed tents,That rise like golden domesAbove the cavernous and secret homesOf wandering and nomadic tribes of ants.Ah, cruel little Tamerlane,Who, with thy dreadful reign,Dost persecute and overwhelmThese hapless Troglodytes of thy realm!
What! tired already! with those suppliant looks,And voice more beautiful than a poet's books, Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,Thou comest back to parley with repose!This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,With its o'erhanging golden canopyOf leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,And shining with the argent light of dews,Shall for a season be our place of rest.Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest,From which the laughing birds have taken wing,By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.Dream-like the waters of the river gleam;A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
O child! O new-born denizenOf life's great city! on thy headThe glory of the morn is shed,Like a celestial benison! Here at the portal thou dost stand,And with thy little handThou openest the mysterious gateInto the future's undiscovered land.I see its valves expand,As at the touch of Fate!Into those realms of love and hate,Into that darkness blank and drear,By some prophetic feeling taught,I launch the bold, adventurous thought,Freighted with hope and fear;As upon subterranean streams,In caverns unexplored and dark,Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,Laden with flickering fire,And watch its swift-receding beams,Until at length they disappear,And in the distant dark expire. By what astrology of fear or hopeDare I to cast thy horoscope!Like the new moon thy life appears;A little strip of silver light,And widening outward into nightThe shadowy disk of future years;And yet upon its outer rim,A luminous circle, faint and dim,And scarcely visible to us here,Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;A prophecy and intimation,A pale and feeble adumbration,Of the great world of light, that liesBehind all human destinies.
Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,Should be to wet the dusty soilWith the hot tears and sweat of toil,— To struggle with imperious thought, Until the overburdened brain,Weary with labor, faint with pain,Like a jarred pendulum, retainOnly its motion, not its power,—Remember, in that perilous hour,When most afflicted and oppressed,From labor there shall come forth rest.
And if a more auspicious fateOn thy advancing steps await,Still let it ever be thy prideTo linger by the laborer's side;With words of sympathy or songTo cheer the dreary march alongOf the great army of the poor,O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor.Nor to thyself the task shall beWithout reward; for thou shalt learnThe wisdom early to discernTrue beauty in utility; As great Pythagoras of yore,Standing beside the blacksmith's door,And hearing the hammers, as they smoteThe anvils with a different note,Stole from the varying tones, that hungVibrant on every iron tongue,The secret of the sounding wire,And formed the seven-chorded lyre.
Enough! I will not play the Seer;I will no longer strive to opeThe mystic volume, where appearThe herald Hope, forerunning Fear,And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope.Thy destiny remains untold;For, like Acestes' shaft of old,The swift thought kindles as it flies,And burns to ashes in the skies.