Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Death of Children
By John Quincy Adams (17671848)S
When infant innocence ascends,
Some angel brighter than the rest
The spotless spirit’s flight attends.
Beyond where worlds material roll
Till some fair sister of the skies
Receives the unpolluted soul.
Nearest the throne of living light,
The choirs of infant seraphs stand,
And dazzling shine, where all are bright.
With dust united at our birth,
Sheds a more dim, discolored gleam,
The more it lingers upon earth.
The stream of glory faintly burns,
Nor unobscured the lucid ray
To its own native fount returns.
Decrees his bounty to resume,
And points the silent shaft of death,
Which speeds an infant to the tomb—
Has quenched the radiance of the flame;
Back to its God the living fire
Returns unsullied, as it came.