CXVI. To aid thy mind's developement,--to watch Thy dawn of little joys,--to sit and see Almost thy very growth,--to view thee catch Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee! To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee, And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,-- This, it should seem, was not reserved for me-- Yet this was in my nature:--as it is, I know not what is there, yet something like to this. CXVII. Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,[353] I know that thou wilt love me: though my name Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation, and a broken claim: Though the grave closed between us,--'twere the same, I know that thou wilt love me--though to drain[354] _My_ blood from out thy being were an aim, And an attainment,--all would be in vain,-- Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain. CXVIII. The child of Love![355] though born in bitterness, And nurtured in Convulsion! Of thy sire These were the elements,--and thine no less. As yet such are around thee,--but thy fire Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher! Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea And from the mountains where I now respire, Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, As--with a sigh--I deem thou might'st have been to me![la] FOOTNOTES: [275] {209} [D'Alembert (Jean-le-Rond, philosopher, mathematician, and belletrist, 1717-1783) had recently lost his friend, Mlle. (Claire Françoise) L'Espinasse, who died May 23, 1776. Frederick prescribes _quelque problème bien difficile à résoudre_ as a remedy for vain regrets (_Oeuvres de Frédéric II., Roi de Prusse_, 1790, xiv. 64, 65).] [276] {215} ["If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reigns of John and Henry.... It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reasons I gave it to my daughter."--Letter to Murray, Ravenna, October 8, 1820. The Honourable Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815; was married July 8, 1835, to William King Noel (1805-1893), eighth Baron King, created Earl of Lovelace, 1838; and died November 27, 1852. There were three children of the marriage--Viscount Ockham (d. 1862), the present Earl of Lovelace, and the Lady Anna Isabella Noel, who was married to Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Esq., in 1869.