No More Learning

THE DYING CHILD TO ITS MOTHER.

_("Oh! vous aurez trop dit. ")_

[Bk. III. xiv. , April, 1843. ]


Ah, you said too often to your angel
There are other angels in the sky--
There, where nothing changes, nothing suffers,
Sweet it were to enter in on high.

To that dome on marvellous pilasters,
To that tent roofed o'er with colored bars,
That blue garden full of stars like lilies,
And of lilies beautiful as stars.

And you said it was a place most joyous,
All our poor imaginings above,
With the winged cherubim for playmates,
And the good God evermore to love.

Sweet it were to dwell there in all seasons,
Like a taper burning day and night,
Near to the child Jesus and the Virgin,
In that home so beautiful and bright.

But you should have told him, hapless mother,
Told your child so frail and gentle too,
That you were all his in life's beginning,
But that also he belonged to you.

For the mother watches o'er the infant,
He must rise up in her latter days,
She will need the man that was her baby
To stand by her when her strength decays.

Ah, you did not tell enough your darling
That God made us in this lower life,
Woman for the man, and man for woman,
In our pains, our pleasures and our strife.

So that one sad day, O loss, O sorrow!
The sweet creature left you all alone;
'Twas your own hand hung the cage door open,
Mother, and your pretty bird is flown.

BP. ALEXANDER.





EPITAPH.

_("Il vivait, il jouait. ")_

[Bk. III. xv. , May, 1843. ]


He lived and ever played, the tender smiling thing.
What need, O Earth, to have plucked this flower from blossoming?
Hadst thou not then the birds with rainbow-colors bright,
The stars and the great woods, the wan wave, the blue sky?
What need to have rapt this child from her thou hadst placed him by--
Beneath those other flowers to have hid this flower from sight?

Because of this one child thou hast no more of might,
O star-girt Earth, his death yields thee not higher delight!
But, ah! the mother's heart with woe for ever wild,
This heart whose sovran bliss brought forth so bitter birth--
This world as vast as thou, even _thou_, O sorrowless Earth,
Is desolate and void because of this one child!