Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/419

 ODE TO CELESTIAL LOVE 409

��ODE TO CELESTIAL LOVE.

Tamer of hearts, whose life began

Long ere the transient race of man

Roamed o'er the yet uncultured earth !

Thine eyes beheld creation's birth,

And saw the heaving ocean shroud

The giant hills in billowy cloud,

While o'er the vast unbroken deep

Silence in darkness lay asleep.

Ere yet the animating breath

Swept o'er the wastes of watery death,

Thou, sleepless, in the Eternal Mind,

Watched through those ages long and blind,

In thine unbounded glance foreseeing

The chain of uncreated being.

Time didst thou rock, while yet he slept,

Till the young infant tottering crept ;

Then didst thou watch, lest he might fall —

The hoary father of us all !

Nurse him, that he might grow, aixi bless

Earth with unending fruitfulness.

Through thee the Almighty Father wrought,

While yet He brooded, wrapped in thought.

With countenance veiled, musing the fate

Of what ere long He might create.

Then, first-born of immortal race,

He smiled benignant on thy face ;

" In thee," He said, "my likeness will I cherish;

Fear not, my daughter, lest thou e'er shouldst perish

Though Time, thy son, must die when he grows old,

And all his children mingle with the mould,

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