AN EPISODE FROM LIFE V. Was it want, disease, or cold, That our little firstling killed? Or was sorrow over it rolled With its mother's milk distilled? We knew not-its wings were furled When the night struck on the moor, And I never dare tell the world The thoughts that my bosom tore. VI. Oh, was it a world of love, The work of the Perfect Mind; Did God look down from above, To human misery blind? Or was it a howling hell, Which the rich escaped by gold, While the poor were doomed to yell, In its flames of torment rolled? VII. From the moors we now looked down Where the golden cross was set, And balconied marble homes, Where the joyous circles met. VIII. Oh! was it a City of Gold, AN EPISODE FROM LIFE. ""Tis too fine for work like ours," To my wife I, sighing, said; "And where, 'mong its halls and bowers, Shall we lay our baby dead?” IX. While the faint moon sadly glowed In the light of lamps and shops. I stared in each passing face With a feeling of anguish wild, As if on some brow to trace The thought of a dear dead child. X. We knocked at many a door In Scarborough's lordly town, The midnight in snow came down; Oh! our little darling slept, And heard not the word unkind. XI. My wife sat down by the gate As if it had stirred in its nest, With its well-known moaning cry. AN EPISODE FROM LIFE. XII. Still silently fell the snow; With sickness, a form came past, And found us shelter at last. XIII. Oh! agony parched my lip, I thought of a watery shroud, But Mercy's benignant hand Was stretched through Misfortune's cloud. XIV. Our babe in its quiet sleep Lay shrouded as soft as balm, And the children came to peep At its beauty, marbly calm; 'Twas touched with diviner grace Than when it had lived and smiled, And hunger would leave its trace No more on our darling child. XV. O'er its beauty infantile A nimbus of glory fell: There lingered a rose-bud smile, A beautiful, peaceful spell; AN EPISODE FROM LIFE. The fingers of Nature wove Its ringlets, which clustered free; XVI. In a plain deal box we shrined Released was the prisoned dove, There was one mouth less to feed, And one angel more above. XVII. The funeral day came on, Two mourners went hand in hand, And laid it beneath the stone In a hole filled up with sand; And when I've a pound to spare, And bright are the summer skies, I will take my children there, To see where their brother lies. Sheldon Chadwick. |