page: 122
A DEAD BABY.
- LITTLE soul, for such brief space that entered
- In this little body straight and chilly,
- Little life that fluttered and departed,
- Like a moth from an unopened lily,
- Little being, without name or nation,
- Where is now thy place among creation?
- Little dark‐lashed eyes, unclosèd never,
- Little mouth, by earthly food ne’er tainted,
- Little breast, that just once heaved, and settled
- In eternal slumber, white and sainted,—
- Child, shall I in future children’s faces
- See some pretty look that thine retraces?
- Is this thrill that strikes across my heart‐strings
- And in dew beneath my eyelid gathers,
- Token of the bliss thou mightst have brought me,
- Dawning of the love they call a father’s?
- Do I hear through this still room a sighing
- Like thy spirit to me its author crying?
- Whence didst come and whither take thy journey,
- Little soul, of me and mine created?
- Must thou lose us, and we thee, forever,
- O strange life, by minutes only dated?
- Or new flesh assuming, just to prove us,
- In some other babe return and love us?
- Idle questions all: yet our beginning
- Like our ending, rests with the Life‐sender,
- With whom naught is lost, and naught spent vainly:
- Unto Him this little one I render.
- Hide the face—the tiny coffin cover:
- So, our first dream, our first hope—is over.
