A skylark soars, amidst the dawn's gray mist, And pours her music on the rising day: Like that enamour'd bird has Love up-kiss'd The veil that clos'd him from the world away. The cloud that soften'd his yet-dawning sight Was parting: on his spirit's orient sea A beam stole, brightening out of gloom to light The unreflected glory of what yet might be.
It was a smile—yet not of human years; A thing half infant and half thing divine; 'Twas not of joy, for in that smile were tears, And not of grief, for in that smile was shine: And while it touch'd his lip, the heaven-born child Look'd round him with a dim, bewilder'd eye; And, as its own first breaths of being glided wild, It whisper'd,—Can I live, and yet not fly?
So Nature's off-spring, gently nurtur'd, stands A moment on the crumbling verge of earth, And looks with doubtful gaze on those bright hands Which at one beck would give it death or birth: We smile, we pause, we tremble, and begin Our being with a hope and with a fear; Such was that smile,—a trembling, faint within, As if a joy had just been born to tear.
There was a murmur in the distant throng; A voice that fram'd itself into a name; Such as, at midnight, when the winds are strong, The desert hears, and trembles at its fame. It was a word of wonder—widely flung O'er hills and valleys, on the earnest air; Like that which startled once the Syrian tongue When first it whisper'd of the Nazarene's prayer.
But hush!—it ceas'd:—and, like a charm dissolv'd, The sounds that whisper'd round that little shrine Broke off like music when the song is solv'd, And left the silence as the only sign. Yet something like a voice was in the hush, A voice of footsteps, and of garments stirr'd; And on the threshold of that wooden rush A figure glided in, with folded sword.
He stood—no monarch's state was in his mien; No jewels flash'd about him—no parade: A cloak of coarse and darken'd tissue screen'd The circling of his limbs that toil betray'd. But there was one unearthly hue in him, A lustre not of suns, nor earthly skies; And in his eye a solitary gleam, As if the future's light within it lies.