Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Alas! The little child is dead
Last Line: And love and mortal fate.
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): Death - Children; Death - Babies


ALAS! the little child is dead.
O sorrow for the downy head
That used to keep his mother's arm
And bosom warm,
And now the chilling earth instead
Must hide, for he is dead!

Mourn, mothers, ye who know how sweet
They were, the blossom-coloured feet
That in our dusty pathways yet
No print had set,
So that the world will scarcely mark
Their little track into the dark.
Only for one the baby feet
Have left earth incomplete.

They coldly lie, but she before
The hearth will chafe them now no more,
Nor swing the boy to let him leap,
Who scarce could creep,
In dainty dance upon the floor:
For all his play-time's o'er.

Nor from that slumber where he lies
Shall he with blue half-wakened eyes,
Stir at her shadow o'er him thrown
Or rustling gown,
And dream a smile because her face
Flits through some visionary place.
She need no longer still her cries
Lest he unclose his eyes.

When last she wept—how many years
Ago it seems!—he dried her tears
With wandering touches velvet-sleek
Upon her cheek.
Now on his fragile breast she bows
Her shaken mouth and heavy brows,
And holds him fast, while he nor fears
Nor wonders at her tears.

Ye mothers, let her not alone
Make on this little dust her moan,
Be near with looks of love and touch
Not over-much
Her quivering grief with words, but wend
With her to-day made more than friend
By ancient mysteries of Earth,
By solemn pangs of death and birth,
Made consecrate, apart, unknown
Save unto you alone.

How lightly borne the little bier,
With all its flowers! And what is here,
That ye in long procession go,
Sombre and slow,
As who at famous obsequies
Mourn for a world bereaved? The wise
Will ask in wonder and recall
Some larger grief, or prodigal
Rich waste of Nature; year by year
Things born to disappear.

But here, within this narrow hearse
The mystery of the Universe
Doth house as kingly and secure,
As vast and sure
As in the marble or the lead
That hold the world-subduing dead.
Its bare inscription doth contain
More than philosophers explain,
Or mightier poets can rehearse,
Making immortal verse.

And who is she with veilëd head?
She had a name, but now instead
Another. What she was before
She is no more,
Nor what she shall be. In her mind
By ways unknown she seems to wind,
Some endless lapse of time to tread
Slowly behind the dead.

Ay, this beyond her thought is true.
The seas have shaped their shores anew,
And stars in other courses roll
About the pole,
Since first this mourning way she went.
In Babylon she made lament,
And hath her ancient sorrow hid
'Neath an Egyptian pyramid;
Yet shall through countries waste and new
The unchanging road pursue.

She mightier names and powers hath known.
For lilies on her pathway strown,
Out of the unsounded gulf of Heaven
The stars were given.
The deep of Earth's divine desire
Surged round her feet in argent fire,
Its passionate rumour, soft, immense,
Rose up to her through frankincense;
She took the moon and Hera's throne,
And Aphrodite's zone.

Through warring chaos, primal gloom,
Promethean shape she seems to loom,
Kindling her hearth with holier flame.
Around it came
Man that was beast, and where it burned
A human fellowship he learned.
She first his shelter, she the nurse
Of all he is, for her the curse
Sprung where she made the desert bloom—
The chain, the Titan's doom.

Adorn with flowers the darkling gate
Where things majestic pass, with state
Religious and with mourning eyes
Your ministries
Perform, ye mothers. Tell aloud
How that the glorious and the proud
The world's deep wave a moment ride
Like foam, and fade upon its tide.
Tell them that Life alone is great,
And Love and mortal Fate.





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