The First Birth Day

The Sun, sweet girl, hath run his year-long race
Through the vast nothing of the eternal sky—
Since the glad hearing of the first faint cry
Announc’d a stranger from the unknown place
Of unborn souls. How blank was then the face,
How uninform’d the weak light-shunning eye,
That wept and saw not. Poor mortality
Begins to mourn before it knows its case,
Prophetic in its ignorance. But soon
The hospitalities of earth engage
The banish’d spirit in its new exile —
Pass some few changes of the fickle Moon,
The merry babe has learn’d its Mother’s smile,
Its father’s frown, its nurse’s mimic rage.