To the Mother

Say, while you press, with growing love,
The darling to your breast,
And all a mother's pleasures prove,
Are you entirely blest?

Ah, no! a thousand tender cares
By turns your thoughts employ,
Now rising hopes, now anxious fears.
And grief succeeds to joy.

Dear innocent, her lovely smiles
With what delight you view!
But every pain the infant feels,
The mother feels it too.

Then whispers busy cruel fear,
The child, alas, may die!
And nature prompts the ready tear,
And heaves the rising sigh.

Say, does not heaven our comforts mix
With more than equal pain;
To teach us if our hearts we fix
On earth, we fix in vain?

Then be our earthly joys resign'd,
Since here we cannot rest;
For earthly joys were ne'er design'd
To make us fully blest.