Classic Poem

Sweet is the light of infancy, and sweet
The glimmering halo round the brows of age!
But mystic more than beautiful are both!—
Mystic with angels' smiles and far-shed gleams

Of something much diviner than the full
Meridian,—something strange with wondrous grace!
And both are kin. The faint horizon round
Which travels the dim globe from West to East
And binds in a ring of tender amethyst
The dying splendour with the dawning rose,
Is but the effluence of that which crowns
Their passage thro' the world; consummate day!
From angels' arms they come, to angels' arms
They go; young eyes that greet the growing beams,
And weary lids that watch them wink and fade,
Behold the same soft twilight of the sky;
The difference is but of morn and eve.
Fresh morn and fading eve! twin mothers dear,
Whose bosoms give the milk of mortal hours
To one and to the other, evermore—
Eternity, nursing them both as babes!
And both are babes!—one rock'd in the lap of life
And one in the lap of death!