Moses in the Bulrushes

Hartley Coleridge

1796 to 1849

Poem Image

She left her babe, and went away to weep,
And listen’d oft to hear if he did cry;
But the great river sung his lullaby,
And unseen angels fann’d his balmy sleep.
And yet his innocence itself might keep;
The sacred silence of his slumb’rous smile 
Makes peace in all the monster-breeding Nile;
For God e’en now is moving in the sweep 
Of mighty waters. Little dreams the maid,
The royal maid, that comes to woo the wave 
With her smooth limbs beneath the trembling shade 
Of silver-chaliced lotus, what a child 
Her freak of pity is ordain’d to save!
How terrible the thing that looks so mild!