Helen Hoyt

From “Poems of Life and Death”

I HAVE heard them in the night—

The cry of their fear,

Because there is no light,

Because they do not hear

Familiar sounds and feel the familiar arm,

And they awake alone.

Yet they have never known

Danger or harm.

What is their dread?—

This dark about their bed?

But they are so lately come

Out of the dark womb

Where they were safely kept.

That blackness was good;

And the silence of that solitude

Wherein they slept

Was kind.

Where did they find

Knowledge of death?

Caution of darkness and cold?

These—of the little, new breath—

Have they a prudence so old?