The Clopton Chronicles
A Project of the Clopton Family Genealogical Society
ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON
AS BORN
By Charles Lamb
I saw wherein the shroud did
lurk
A curious frame of Nature’s
work;
A flow-ret crushed 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 they 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 maimed
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?
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