Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.
Mimma BellaEugene Lee-Hamilton (18451907)
A one-day’s blossom that the hoar-frost nips?
A bee that ’s crusht, the first bright day it sips?
A small dropt gem that in the earth we tread?
That Death from out Life’s painted missal rips?
Or murmured prayer that barely reached the lips?
Or sonnet’s fair first line—the rest unsaid?
The world is full of fair unfinished things
That vanish like a dawn-admonished elf.
The woods are full of unfledged broken wings;
Enough for us, thou wast thy baby self.
That was her nursery, a small bright spark
Comes wandering in, as falls the summer dark,
And with a measured flight explores the gloom.
Vague in the dusk, for some familiar mark,
And like a light on some wee unseen bark,
It tacks in search of who knows what or whom.
So straight, so measured, round the empty bed,
Might be a little soul’s that night sets free;
With something like a superstitious dread,
And watch it breathless, lest it should be she.