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To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon To Become Visible


By Anna Laetitia Barbauld


 

Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow
For many a moon their full perfection wait,--
Haste, precious pledge of happy love, to go
Auspicious borne through life's mysterious gate.

What powers lie folded in thy curious frame,--
Senses from objects locked, and mind from thought!
How little canst thou guess thy lofty claim
To grasp at all the worlds the Almighty wrought!

And see, the genial season's warmth to share,
Fresh younglings shoot, and opening roses glow!
Swarms of new life exulting fill the air,--
Haste, infant bud of being, haste to blow!

For thee the nurse prepares her lulling songs,
The eager matrons count the lingering day;
But far the most thy anxious parent longs
On thy soft cheek a mother's kiss to lay.

She only asks to lay her burden down,
That her glad arms that burden may resume;
And nature's sharpest pangs her wishes crown,
That free thee living from thy living tomb.

She longs to fold to her maternal breast
Part of herself, yet to herself unknown;
To see and to salute the stranger guest,
Fed with her life through many a tedious moon.

Come, reap thy rich inheritance of love!
Bask in the fondness of a Mother's eye!
Nor wit nor eloquence her heart shall move
Like the first accents of thy feeble cry.

Haste, little captive, burst thy prison doors!
Launch on the living world, and spring to light!
Nature for thee displays her various stores,
Opens her thousand inlets of delight.

If charmed verse or muttered prayers had power,
With favouring spells to speed thee on thy way,
Anxious I'd bid my beads each passing hour,
Till thy wished smile thy mother's pangs o'erpay.



 

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was born in Leicestershire, England, to the Reverend John Aikin, Master of Kibworth School. At the age of twenty three she wrote a collection of poems called Corsica, which although not published, were widely circulated in manuscript form. She was also actively encouraged by her younger brother to pursue her writing; and her first published pieces were six poems in his book Essays on Song Writing. In 1774 she married Rochemont Barbauld, and a number of her poems are celebratory affairs of the happy times spent with him. Together they set up a boarding school. Unfortunately, due to mental illness and a breakdown, the couple seperated in 1808, after her once idyllic relationship with her husband had deteriorated to the point where he had attacked her with a knife. Despite the subject of this particular poem, the couple never actually had any children of their own.


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First Science 2014