My Children

My Children

They sleep; athwart my white

Moon-marbled casement, with her solemn mein,
Silently watching o'er their rest serene,

Gazeth the star-eyed Night.

My girl, sedate or wild,

By turns as playful as a summer breze,
Or grave as Night or star-lit Southern seas,

Serence, strange woman-child!

My boy, my trembling star!

The whitest lamb in April's tenderest fold,
The bluest flower-bell in the shadiest wold

His gentle emblems are.

They are but two, and all

My lonely heart's arithmetic is done
When these are counted, High and Holy One,

O hear my trembling call!

I ask not wealth nor fame

For these, my jewels. Diadem and wreath
Soothe not the aching brow that throbs beneath,

Nor cool its fevered flame.

I ask not length of life,

Nor earthly honor. Weary are the ways
The gifted tread; unsafe the world's best praise

And keen its strife.

I ask not that to me

Thou spare them, though they dearer, dearer be
Than rain to deserts, sunshine to the sea,

Or spring flowers to the bee.

But kneeling at their feet,

While smiles, like summer light on shaded streams,
Are glancing from her glad and sinless dreams,

I would my prayer repeat.

In that alluring land.

The Future, where amid green, stately bowers,
Ornate with proud and crimson flowers,

Pleasure, with smooth, white hand.

Beckons the young away

From glen and hill-side to her banquet fair,
Sin, the grim she-wolf, croucheth in her lair,

Ready to seize her prey.

The bright and purpling bloom

Of Night-shade and Acanthus cannot hide
The charred and bleaching bones that are denied

Taper, and chrism, and tomb!

Lord, in this midnight hour,

I bring my lambs to thee. O, by thy truth,
Thy mercy, save them from th'envenomed tooth,

And tempting poison-flowers!

O, Crucified and Crowned,

Keep us! We have no shield, no guide but Thee!
Let sorrow come—let Hope's last blossom be

By Grief's dark deluge drowned;

But lead by Thine hand,

O gentlest Shepherd, till we rest beside,
The still, dear waters in the pastures wide

Of Thine our Sinless Lamb.

Unattributed

1:6, p. 1

9.7.1861