[Page [273]]

LINES

ADDRESSED TO A. C., AN INFANT, ON HIS FIRST NEW-YEAR'S DAY, 1821.

I.
1 DEAR Babe, soft object of my care,
2 Unseen, for whom I pour my pray'r;
3 Unknown, yet priz'd all else above,
4 The heir of my maternal love;
5 Ah, let me hail, in simplest lay,
6 Thy earliest New-Year's Day!
[Page 274]
II.
7 Nor past, nor future cloud thy brow,
8 Thy range of thought confin'd to now;
9 Calm on a mother's breast you lie,
10 And heed not if, with tearful eye,
11 For thee her wishes fondly stray
12 O'er many a New-Year's Day.
III.
13 Yet soon the years in rapid flight
14 Shall wake thy heart to new delight;
15 Soon shall exulting youth draw near,
16 With charms so fresh, and hopes so dear;
17 And lovely as the bloom of May
18 Shall seem each New-Year's Day.
IV.
19 But ah, since Time at length will bring
20 No rapture on his weary wing,
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21 Then, o'er thy path, no longer bright,
22 May Virtue shed a line of light,
23 That cheers the pilgrim, when his way
24 Leads to no New-Year's Day!

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Title (in Source Edition): LINES ADDRESSED TO A. C., AN INFANT, ON HIS FIRST NEW-YEAR'S DAY, 1821.
Themes:
Genres: occasional poem

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Source edition

Williams, Helen Maria, 1759-1827. Poems on various subjects: with introductory remarks on the present state of science and literature in France. London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823, pp. [273]-275.  (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [8º W 229 BS].)

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Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by Helen Maria Williams