No lady in the land such sweet
Simplicity could own;
A natural grace had she, that all
Art's graces far outshone;
Beauty and worth for want of birth
Abundantly atone.
What need of more? That loving pair
Lived long and truly so;
Nor ever disunited were;
For one death laid them low!
And hence arose that custom old
The Custom of Dunmow.
Lo! at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps ;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy
Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy:
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine;
No sigh that rends thy father's heart and mine;
Bright as his manly sire the son shall be
In form and soul; but ah! more blest than he!
Thy fame, thy worth, thy filial love, at last,
Shall soothe this aching heart for all the past-
With many a smile my solitude repay,
And chase the world's ungenerous scorn away.
"And say, when summon'd from the world and thee,
I lay my head beneath the willow-tree,
Wilt thou, sweet mourner! at my stone appear,
And soothe my parted spirit lingering near?
Oh, wilt thou come, at evening hour, to shed
The tears of memory o'er my narrow bed;
With aching temples on thy hand reclined,
Muse on the last farewell I leave behind,
Breathe a deep sigh to winds that murmur low,
And think on all my love, and all my woe?"
So speaks affection, ere the infant eye
Can look regard, or brighten in reply.
But when the cherub lip hath learnt to claim
A mother's ear by that endearing name;
Soon as the playful innocent can prove
A tear of pity, or a smile of love,
Or cons his murmuring task beneath her care,
Or lisps, with holy look, his evening prayer,
Or gazing, mutely pensive, sits to hear
The mournful ballad warbled in his ear;
How fondly looks admiring Hope the while,
At every artless tear, and every smile!
How glows the joyous parent to descry
A guileless bosom, true to sympathy!
O HAPPY husband! happy wife!
The rarest blessing Heaven drops down, The sweetest blossom in Spring's crown, Starts in the furrows of your life!
God! what a towering height ye win,
Who cry, "Lo, my beloved child!"
And, life on life sublimely piled,
Ye touch the heavens and peep within!
Look how a star of glory swims
Down aching silences of space,
Flushing the darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o'erbrims!
So brightening came Babe Christabel,
To touch the earth with fresh romance,
And light a mother's countenance
With looking on her miracle.
With hands so flower-like, soft, and fair,
She caught at life, with words as sweet
As first spring violets, and feet
As faery-light as feet of air.
The father, down in Toil's murk mine,
Turns to his wealthy world above,
Its radiance, and its home of love;
And lights his life like sun-struck wine.
The mother moves with queenlier tread:
Proud swell the globes of ripe delight
Above her heart, so warm and white,
A pillow for the baby-head!
Their natures deepen, well-like, clear,
Till God's eternal stars are seen,
For ever shining and serene,
By eyes anointed Beauty's seer.
A sense of glory all things took,
The red rose-heart of Dawn would blow, And Sundown's sumptuous pictures show Babe-cherubs wearing their babe's look!
And round their peerless one they clung,
Like bees about a flower's wine-cup;
New thoughts and feelings blossom'd up,
And hearts for very fulness sung
Of what their budding babe shall grow,
When the maid crimsons into wife,
And crowns the summit of some life,
Like Phosphor, with morn on its brow!
And they should bless her for a bride,
Who, like a splendid saint alit
In some heart's seventh heaven, should sit,
As now in theirs, all glorified!
But O! 'twas all too white a brow
To flush with passion that doth fire
With Hymen's torch its own death-pyre,-
So pure her heart was beating now!
And thus they built their castles brave
In faery lands of gorgeous cloud;
They never saw a little white shroud,
Nor guess'd how flowers may mask the grave.
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