Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODE OF INFANCY, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ODE OF INFANCY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Oh, little child!
Last Line: And life's imperial portals opening gradually wide.
Subject(s): Babies; Infants


OH, little child!
Stretched on thy mother's knees, with steadfast gaze
And innocent aspect mild,
Viewing this novel scene in mute amaze,
Following the moving light, thy mother's smile,
And storing up the while
New precious knowledge till thou com'st to be
Sage it may be or clown --
Soaring or sinking down,
To topmost heights of weal or depths of misery;
How shall I dare to mark thy innocent look,
And write as in a book
Thy infinite possibilities of life;
What fate awaits thee in the coming strife,
What joys, what triumphs in the growing years,
What depths of woe and tears?

I see thee lie
Safe in thy silken cradle, sunk in down,
Within thy father's palace-chambers fair;
Thy guarded slumbers breathing tempered air;
The soft eyes, full of yearning, watching by;
Caressing arms waiting thy waking cry;
All luxury and state which can assuage
Life's painful heritage;
The prayers of a people swell for thee
Up to the careless skies which cover all.
And yet it may be thine to fall
Far from thy loved and native land,
And end thy imperfect, innocent life-tale here,
Forsaken on a savage desert strand,
Pierced through and through by some barbarian spear.

I see thy tiny face
Pale, worn with hunger, and large hollow eyes,
Upon the frozen way-side laid
Stiffening in thy dead mother's cold embrace.
I hear thy piteous cries
When the sot flings thee down with limbs that bleed --
Flings thee, and takes no heed;
Weak, helpless, born to misery, girt round
With vice and sin and shame, in sight and sound.
Poor life foredoomed, already sunk and lost;
Too often sent to tread the ways of death
With childish failing breath;
Yet ofttimes holding power
To bloom a virgin flower
Upon the untrodden heights closed to the multitude,
Among the wise and good.

Or with brown face thou comest and limb,
Naked, on the warm soil that bears the palm;
Or haply the young heir of all the dim
And half-forgotten realms whose ruins stand
Sown lion-haunted on the deathlike calm
Which wraps the Egyptian or Assyrian sand,
Reared 'midst the dust of empires; or art now
As through all history thou wert, the child
Of savage parents, rude and wild,
Springing and falling; born to flower and seed,
Or sink upon the uncaring earth, a weed
Trodden by the pitiless feet of cruel men
With hearts that ape the tiger's; or art born
In the old, old empire, which hath long outworn
God and the hopes of man, and yet coheres,
Propped by its own far-reaching bulk, as when
It did emerge from savagery and grew,
Oh, child! as yet may you,
To worldly strength, and knowledge, and dead lore
Of wisdom fled before,
And dull content, and soulless hopes and fears.

Wherever thou mayest be,
To me thou art wonderful and strange to see --
Busied with trifles, rapt with simple toys,
As men with graver joys.
I hear thy lisping accents slowly reach
The miracle of speech;
I mark thy innocent smile;
I treasure up each baby wile
Which smooths the brow of thought, the front of care.
Thou royal scion, born to be the heir
Of all the unrecorded days, since first
Man rose to his full being, once blest, and then accurst!

In weal and woe and ill
Thou art a miracle still.
From snow-bound hut to equatorial strand,
Above thee still regarding angels stand;
While thy brief life-tale fleeteth like a dream
Across Creation's glass.
Dark powers of ill press thee on either side,
As now thy swift years pass,
Revealing on the young soul's tablets white
The eternal characters of Right;
Or sometimes with the growing years grown strong
The unhallowed signs of wrong.

Oh, little child! thou bringest with thee still,
As Moses, parting from the fiery hill,
Some dim reflection in thine eyes,
Some sense of Godhead, some indefinite wonder
As of one drifted here unwillingly;
Who knows no speech of ours, and yet doth keep
Some dumb remembrance of a gracious home
Which lights his waking hours and fills his sleep
With precious visions which unbidden come;
Some golden link which nought of earth can sunder,
Some glimpse of a more glorious land and sea!

Oh, precious vision fleeting past!
Oh, age too fair to last!
For soon new gifts and powers are thine,
And growing springs and summers bring
Boyhood or girlhood hastening,
And nerve the agile limb, and teach,
With the new gift of speech,
The wonders that stand round on every side,
And Life's imperial portals opening gradually wide.





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