XV. FROM FREDERICK.

‘ How did I feel?’ The little wight

Fill'd me, unfatherly, with fright!

So grim it gazed, and, out of the sky,

There came, minute, remote, the cry,

Piercing, of original pain.

I put the wonder back to Jane,

And her delight seem'd dash'd, that I,

Of strangers still by nature shy,

Was not familiar quite so soon

With her small friend of many a moon.

But, when the new-made Mother smiled,

She seem'd herself a little child,

Dwelling at large beyond the law

By which, till then, I judged and saw;

And that fond glow which she felt stir

For it, suffused my heart for her;

To whom, from the weak babe, and thence

To me, an influent innocence,

Happy, reparative of life,

Came, and she was indeed my wife,

As there, lovely with love she lay,

Brightly contented all the day

To hug her sleepy little boy,

In the reciprocated joy

Of touch, the childish sense of love,

Ever inquisitive to prove

Its strange possession, and to know

If the eye's report be really so.