Morning Poem by Maria Gowen Brooks

How beauteous art thou, O thou morning sun! —
The old man, feebly tottering forth, admires
As much thy beauty, now life's dream is done,
As when he moved exulting in his fires.

The infant strains his little arms, to catch
The rays that glance about his silken hair;
And Luxury hangs her amber lamps, to match
Thy face, when turned away from bower and palace fair.

Sweet to the lip, the draught, the blushing fruit;
Music and perfumes mingle with the soul;
How thrills the kiss, when feeling's voice is mute;
And light and beauty's tints enhance the whole.

Yet each keen sense were dulness but for thee;
Thy ray to joy, love, virtue, genius, warms;
Thou never weariest; no inconstancy
But comes to pay new homage to thy charms.

How many lips have sung thy praise, how long!
Yet, when his slumbering harp he feels thee woo,
The pleasured bard pours forth another song,
And finds in thee, like love, a theme for ever new.

Thy dark-eyed daughters come in beauty forth
In thy near realms; and, like their snow-wreaths fair,
The bright-hair'd youths and maidens of the North,
Smile in thy colours when thou art not there.

'T is there thou bid'st a deeper ardour glow,
And higher, purer reveries completest;
As drops that farthest from the ocean flow,
Refining all the way, from springs the sweetest.

Haply, sometimes, spent with the sleepless night,
Some wretch impassion'd, from sweet morning's breath,
Turns his hot brow and sickens at thy light;
But Nature, ever kind, soon heals or gives him death.