Classic Poem

" Those destined thoughts that haunt my breast,
And throb, and heave, and swell,
Impatient of their painful rest.
And state invisible,
Those thoughts at last must meet the day,
And with me dwell, or on me prey:
On me, on me those thoughts must call,
And act, and live, and move abroad:
I am the mother of them all:
Be Thou their Father, God! "

Thus prayed I; musing on that law
By which the children of the brain
Their linked generations draw
(A melancholy train)
From moods long past which feigned to die,
But in whose quickening ashes lie
Immortal seeds of pain or pleasure
No foot can crush, no will control,
No craft transmute, no prescience measure,
Dread harvests of the ripening soul!