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Christmas at the hall

Chapter 46: Lines to a Young Child.

By T. J. Terrington

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About This Book

This collection presents a sequence of poems built around a framing Christmas family gathering that links diverse shorter pieces; it moves between domestic sketches, seasonal and religious meditations, elegies and occasional tributes. Maritime landscapes and coastal scenes appear alongside reflective night musings, sonnets and ballads, while personal aspiration toward the poetic calling recurs in a few direct addresses. The verse varies in metre and tone, alternating descriptive natural imagery, moral and devotional reflection, and narrative fragments, producing an earnest, uneven but sincere portrait of a nineteenth-century poet testing his powers across themes of home, nature, loss, and hope.

Lines to a Young Child.

Come hither, pretty creature,

Come hither from thy play;

’Tis in thy happy nature

To gambol all the day.

Thy cheek so fair and smiling,

Thine eye so softly blue,

Awake in me repining

To be a child like you.

Once was I young as thee, love,

And played as thou dost now;

With heart as light and joyous,

Such gladness on my brow.

I culled young flowers as gaily,

And bound them in a wreath;

But soon their hues so lovely

All withered into death.

And like that beauty fading,

Have hopes and joys decayed;

Bright visions fled for ever,

And heart-trust been betrayed.

Thus will thy young heart suffer

Amid the wrestling strife

Of grief, pain, tears and sorrow,

That wait on human life.

Yet is a sweet balm given

To sooth and to appease;

The radiant hope of heaven—

That land were sorrows cease.

Thence cheering rays of brightness

Illuminate earth’s shore,

Oh! follow but their guidance

And soon thou’lt weep no more!