Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DEATH-CHILD, by WILLIAM SHARP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DEATH-CHILD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: She sits beneath the elder-tree
Last Line: Knoweth that he is dead.
Alternate Author Name(s): Macleod, Fiona
Subject(s): Children; Death; Dreams; Tears; Childhood; Dead, The; Nightmares


She sits beneath the elder-tree
And sings her song so sweet,
And dreams o'er the burn that darksomely
Runs by her moon-white feet.

Her hair is dark as starless night,
Her flower-crown'd face is pale,
But oh, her eyes are lit with light
Of dread ancestral bale.

She sings an eerie song, so wild
With immemorial dule --
Though young and fair Death's mortal child
That sits by that dark pool.

And oft she cries an eldritch scream
When red with human blood
The burn becomes a crimson stream,
A wild, red, surging flood:

Or shrinks, when some swift tide of tears --
The weeping of the world --
Dark eddying 'neath man's phantom-fears,
Is o'er the red stream hurl'd.

For hours beneath the elder-tree
She broods beside the stream;
Her dark eyes filled with mystery,
Her dark soul rapt in dream.

The lapsing flow she heedeth not
Though deepest depths she scans:
Life is the shade that clouds her thought,
As Death's the eclipse of man's.

Time seems but as a bitter thing
Remember'd from of yore:
Yet ah (she thinks) her song she'll sing
When Time's long reign is o'er.

Erstwhiles she bends alow to hear
What the swift water sings,
The torrent running darkly clear
With secrets of all things.

And then she smiles a strange sad smile,
And lets her harp lie long;
The death-waves oft may rise the while,
She greets them with no song.

Few ever cross that dreary moor,
Few see that flower-crown'd head;
But whoso knows that wild song's lure
Knoweth that he is dead.





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