Limbs so firm, they seem’d to assure
  Life of health and days mature: 
  Woman’s self in miniature! 
  Limbs so fair, they might supply
  (Themselves now but cold imagery)
  The sculptor to make Beauty by. 
  Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry,
  That babe or mother, one must die;
  So in mercy left the stock,
  And cut the branch; to save the shock
  Of young years widow’d; and the pain,
  When Single State comes back again
  To the lone man who, ’reft of wife,
  Thenceforward drags a maimed life? 
  The economy of Heaven is dark;
  And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark,
  Why Human Buds, like this, should fall,
  More brief than fly ephemeral,
  That has his day; while shrivell’d crones
  Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
  And crabbed use the conscience sears
  In sinners of an hundred years. 
  Mother’s prattle, mother’s kiss,
  Baby fond, thou ne’er wilt miss. 
  Rites, which custom does impose,
  Silver bells and baby clothes;
  Coral redder than those lips,
  Which pale death did late eclipse;
  Music framed for infants’ glee,
  Whistle never tuned for thee;
  Though thou want’st not, thou shalt have them,
  Loving hearts were they which gave them. 
  Let not one be missing; nurse,
  See them laid upon the hearse
  Of infant slain by doom perverse. 
  Why should kings and nobles have
  Pictured trophies to their grave;
  And we, churls, to thee deny
  Thy pretty toys with thee to lie,
  A more harmless vanity?

* * * * *

THE CHRISTENING.

  Array’d—­a half-angelic sight—­
  In vests of pure Baptismal white,
  The mother to the Font doth bring
  The little helpless nameless thing,
  With hushes soft and mild caressing,
  At once to get—­a name and blessing. 
  Close by the babe the Priest doth stand,
  The Cleansing Water at his hand,
  Which must assoil the soul within
  From every stain of Adam’s sin. 
  The Infant eyes the mystic scenes,
  Nor knows what all this wonder means;
  And now he smiles, as if to say
  “I am a Christian made this day;”
  Now frighted clings to Nurse’s hold,
  Shrinking from the water cold,
  Whose virtues, rightly understood,
  Are, as Bethesda’s waters, good. 
  Strange words—­The World, The Flesh, The Devil—­
  Poor Babe, what can it know of evil? 
  But we must silently adore
  Mysterious truths, and not explore. 
  Enough for him, in after-times,
  When he shall read these artless rhymes,
  If, looking back upon this day
  With quiet conscience, he can say—­
  “I have in part redeem’d the pledge
  Of my Baptismal privilege;
  And more and more will strive to flee
  All which my Sponsors kind did then renounce for me.”

* * * * *

THE YOUNG CATECHIST[1]