Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Charles Lamb

426. On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born

I SAW where in the shroud did lurk

A curious frame of Nature’s work;

A flow’ret crushéd in the bud,

A nameless piece of Babyhood,

Was in her cradle-coffin lying;

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

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?

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,

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:

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

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

To the lone man who, reft of wife,

Thenceforward drags a maiméd life?

The economy of Heaven is dark,

And wisest clerks have miss’d the mark

Why human buds, like this, should fall,

More brief than fly ephemeral

That has his day; while shrivell’d crones

Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;

And crabbed use the conscience sears

In sinners of an hundred years.

—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

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.

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,

And we, churls, to thee deny

Thy pretty toys with thee to lie—

A more harmless vanity?