Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Charles Lamb. 17751834579. On an Infant dying as soon as born
I SAW where in the shroud did lurk | |
A curious frame of Nature’s work; | |
A floweret crush’d in the bud, | |
A nameless piece of Babyhood, | |
Was in her cradle-coffin lying; | 5 |
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying: | |
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb | |
For darker closets of the tomb! | |
She did but ope an eye, and put | |
A clear beam forth, then straight up shut | 10 |
For the long dark: ne’er more to see | |
Through glasses of mortality. | |
Riddle of destiny, who can show | |
What thy short visit meant, or know | |
What thy errand here below? | 15 |
Shall we say that Nature blind | |
Check’d her hand, and changed her mind, | |
Just when she had exactly wrought | |
A finish’d pattern without fault? | |
Could she flag, or could she tire, | 20 |
Or lack’d she the Promethean fire | |
(With her nine moons’ long workings sicken’d) | |
That should thy little limbs have quicken’d? | |
Limbs so firm, they seem’d to assure | |
Life of health, and days mature: | 25 |
Woman’s self in miniature! | |
Limbs so fair, they might supply | |
(Themselves now but cold imagery) | |
The sculptor to make Beauty by. | |
Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry | 30 |
That babe or mother, one must die; | |
So in mercy left the stock | |
And cut the branch; to save the shock | |
Of young years widow’d, and the pain | |
When single state comes back again | 35 |
To the lone man who, reft of wife, | |
Thenceforward drags a maimèd life? | |
The economy of Heaven is dark, | |
And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark, | |
Why human buds, like this, should fall, | 40 |
More brief than fly ephemeral | |
That has his day; while shrivell’d crones | |
Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; | |
And crabbèd use the conscience sears | |
In sinners of an hundred years. | 45 |
Mother’s prattle, mother’s kiss, | |
Baby fond, thou ne’er wilt miss: | |
Rites, which custom does impose, | |
Silver bells, and baby clothes; | |
Coral redder than those lips | 50 |
Which pale death did late eclipse; | |
Music framed for infants’ glee, | |
Whistle never tuned for thee; | |
Though thou want’st not, thou shalt have them, | |
Loving hearts were they which gave them. | 55 |
Let not one be missing; nurse, | |
See them laid upon the hearse | |
Of infant slain by doom perverse. | |
Why should kings and nobles have | |
Pictured trophies to their grave, | 60 |
And we, churls, to thee deny | |
Thy pretty toys with thee to lie— | |
A more harmless vanity? |