Collected Poems

The Spring Child

(On Basanti's birthday–Jyestha 1900)

Of Spring is her name for whose bud and blooming
    We praise today the Giver,—
Of Spring and its sweetness clings about her
For her face is Spring and Spring's without her,
    As loth to leave her.

See, it is summer; the brilliant sunlight
    Lies hard on stream and plain,
And all things wither with heats diurnal;
But she! how vanished things and vernal
    In her remain.

And almost indeed we repine and marvel
    To watch her bloom and grow;
For half we had thought our sweet bud could never
Bloom out, but must surely remain for ever
    The child we know.

But now though summer must come and autumn
    In God's high governing
Yet I deem that her soul with soft insistence
Shall guard through all change the sweet existence
    And charm of Spring.

O dear child soul, our loved and cherished,
    For this thy days had birth,
Like some tender flower on a grey stone portal
To sweeten and flush with childhood immortal
    The ageing earth.

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There are flowers in God's garden of prouder blooming
    Brilliant and bold and bright,
The tulip and rose are fierier and brighter,
But this has a softer hue, a whiter
    And milder light.

Long be thy days in rain and sunshine,
    Often thy spring relume,
Gladdening thy mother's heart with thy beauty,
Flowerlike doing thy gentle duty
    To be loved and bloom.