I saw where in the shroud did lurk |
A curious frame of Nature’s work; |
A flow’ret crushéd in the bud, |
A nameless piece of Babyhood, |
Was in her cradle-coffin lying; |
Extinct, with scarce the sense of
dying: |
So soon to exchange the imprisoning
womb |
For darker closets of the tomb! |
She did but ope an eye, and put |
A clear beam forth, then straight up
shut |
For the long dark: ne’er more to see |
Through glasses of mortality. |
Riddle of destiny, who can show |
What thy short visit meant, or know |
What thy errand here below? |
Shall we say, that Nature blind |
Check’d her hand, and changed her mind |
Just when she had exactly wrought |
A finish’d pattern without fault? |
Could she flag, or could she tire, |
Or lack’d she the Promethean fire |
(With her nine moons’ long workings
sicken’d) |
That should thy little limbs have
quicken’d? |
Limbs so firm, they seem’d to assure |
Life of health, and days mature; |
Woman’s self in miniature! |
Limbs so fair, they might supply |
(Themselves now but cold imagery) |
The sculpture to make Beauty by. |
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry |
That babe or mother, one must die; |
So in mercy left the stock |
And cut the branch; to save the shock |
Of young years widow’d, and the pain |
When Single State comes back again |
To the lone-man who, reft of wife, |
Thenceforeward drags a maiméd life? |
The economy of Heaven is dark, |
And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark |
Why human buds, like this, should fall |
More brief than fly ephemeral |
That has his day; while shrivell’d
cronies |
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; |
And crabbéd use the conscience sears |
In sinners of an hundred years. |
―Mother’s prattle, mother’s kiss, |
Baby fond, thou ne’er wilt miss: |
Rites, which custom does impose, |
Silver bells, and baby clothes; |
Coral redder than those lips |
Which pale death did late eclipse; |
Music framed for infants’ glee, |
Whistle never tuned for thee; |
Though thou want’st not, thou shalt
have them, |
Loving hearts were they which gave
them. |
Let not one be missing; nurse, |
See them laid upon the hearse |
Of infant slain by doom perverse. |
Why should kings and nobles have |
Pictured trophies to their grave, |
And we, churls, to thee deny |
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie― |
A more harmless vanity?
|
Charles Lamb
| Classic Poems |
|
[ Hester ] [ On An Infant Dying As Soon As Born ] [ The Old Familiar Faces ] |