I cannot say, I cannot say, my beautiful and wild,
I’ve ever seen so fair a one as thou my pretty child--
A form so full of elegance, a cheek where roses blow,
And a forehead where the glossy curls seem braided over snow--
A lip whence sounds of music gush, that might with ease unsphere
Some spirit from its airy halls and witch that spirit here.
When first thy mother gave thee me, my beautiful and wild,
And others sought to gaze upon and bless the pretty child,
And thy soft lip to mine was press’d, and thy soft hand I felt,
And felt all of a father’s heart within my bosom melt;
I know I heaved a sigh, for there was sadness in my joy--
Thou wert so very beautiful, my smiling little boy.
Where’er thou go’st, there seems to go a gladness, and a life,
Which all unfitted is for this dark world of sin and strife;
Thou dost remind me of the flowers that are when Spring comes on,
Thou dost remind me of the light when comes and goes the sun;
Of brooks, and falling waters, when they with the pebbles toy--
Of all that’s gay and beautiful, my smiling little boy.
I mingle with the busied world, and when I find it vain,
I turn me to my happy hearth and little boy again;
I love to have him shout to me, I love his airy call,
I love to hear his little step go patting through the hall;
I love to take him on my knee and fold him into rest,
As doth the parent bird the dove she shelters with her breast.
Thy kind complaints, thy boyish talk, thy merriment, my boy,
Crush all that’s base within my heart, and smooth the day’s annoy;
Where’er I go, if ills assail, and passion plays her part,
And dark Ambition spreads her gauds before my eye and heart,
And I one moment list the voice that proffers me the crown--
I think me of thy looks my boy, and bid the tempter down.
Yet there will sometimes come to me a thought of sadness given,
As the dark cloud streams athwart the flush that tints the sky of even,
When I look at thee, and think of thee, in all thine artlessness,
And think how flowery is the path which thy young foot doth press--
For I know that eye which sparkles now may suddenly be wet,
And the earth which looks so lovely too may be a desert yet.
Ah! yes, I tremble for my boy with fears he cannot know,
Lest he take the path which I have ta’en, and find it leads to wo;
I tremble lest the Circean cup may yet be given him,
With roses decked and myrtles crown’d and sparkling to the brim;
For O! his foot hath not yet tried the path which mine hath trod,
Nor hath his young heart framed a wish he might not give to God.
And yet I will not think it--no! it will not, cannot be,
That fate shall ever fling its shroud of blackness over thee;
Thou art too like thy mother, child,--she would not harm this breast--
And all thy days have been too like the holy and the bless’d;
Thou can’st not other be to me than this, my cradle joy--
Thou wilt not grieve thy father’s heart, my smiling little boy.
[1] A friend of mine thinks he has seen a poem somewhere not altogether
unlike this. Whether such a poem there is I know not, nor have I, after
hunting over pamphlets and periodicals, been able to find one. If the
reader shall be more successful, he will please give the writer of
any similar production as much praise as he chooses, and subduct the
same from me. An author _ought_ to know if he is guilty of plagiarism;
and though I may err, it is my opinion, that among the many who have
written upon this subject, though I may not boast of as much beauty, I
may at least have been as far from stealing as the best of the rhyming
tribe. These are indeed days of barter--still I would live on my own
capital.