Household Words/Volume 12/The Invalid's Mother

by unknown

THE INVALID'S MOTHER.

TO THE SUN, AT LISBON.

O sun! whose universal smile
  Brightens the various lands,
From burning Egypt's fruitful Nile
  And Lybia's desert sands—

To where some frozen Lapland hut,
  Dingy, and cold, and low,
Bids half its gleaming surface jut
  In light above the snow;

I loved thee, as a careless child,
  Where English meadows spread
Their cowslip blossoms sweet and wild
  By Thames' translucent bed!

Now, with a still and serious hope,
  I watch thy rays once more,
And cast life's anxious horoscope
  Upon a foreign shore.

O sun! that beam'd to Camöen's eyes
  Bright as thou dost to mine,
That calmly yet shall set and rise,
  On life and death to shine.

O sun! that many an eager heart
  With false hope hath beguiled.
Deal gently with me, ere we part,
  And heal the alien's child!

A stranger stands on Tagus' banks,
  And looks o'er Tagus' wave,
Oh! shall we leave here joy and thanks,
  Or weep beside a grave?

Dear rivers of my native land,
  Where paler sunshine gleams,
On your green margin shall we stand
  And laugh beside your streams;

And talk of foreign flowers and clinics
  Whose glorious radiance shed
Such pleasure o'er these travell'd times,—
  Or shall we mourn our dead?

No answer comes! Beyond the sen,
  Beyond those azure skies,
A speck in God's eternity,
  Our unseen future lies!

And not as one who braves His will,
  (Which, murmur we or not,
Must guide our onward course, and still
  Decide the dreaded lot):

But with a deep, mysterious awe,
  I see that orb of light,
Which first by His creative law
  Divided day from night;

Which, looking down upon the earth
  With strong life-teeming rays ,
Compels the diamond's star-like bath,
  The red gold's sultry blaze;

Or bids some gentle fragile flower
  Burst, from its calyx cold,
To bloom, like man, its little hour,
  Then sink beneath the mould.

O sun! thou cherisher of life,
  Thou opposite of death,
Dissolver of the frost-bound strife
  That seals up Nature's breath!

Nurse of the poor man's orphan'd brood,
  God of the harvest fields,
Ripener of all earth grants for food,
  And all her beauty yields;

Deliverer of the prison'd streams
  From winter's joyless reign;
Awakener from mournful dreams
  To sound and sense again.

They fable of thee pleasant things;—
  To bear our loved to thee,
The great ships spread their strong white wings,
  Like angels o'er the sea;

And daily in thy heavenly glow
  Our sick and weak we set;
Watch for the end of anxious woe.
  And sigh, "Not yet—not yet! "

O sun! look down on me and mine
  From that o'erarching sky;
Emblem of God's great glory shine,
  And His all-pitying eye;

Lest when I on that glory gaze,
  Mine eyes through tears look out,
Like one who sees with sore amaze
  And faint distressful doubt,

The changed face of some faithless friend,
  Who promised generous aid,
Was trusted, tried, and in the end,
  The trembling hope betray'd.