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A. A. E. C.
Born, July 1848; died, November 1849.
OF English blood, of Tuscan birth | |
| What country should we give her? | |
| Instead of any on the earth, | |
| The civic Heavens receive her. | |
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| And here among the English tombs | 5 |
| In Tuscan ground we lay her, | |
| While the blue Tuscan sky endomes | |
| Our English words of prayer. | |
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| A little child!—how long she lived, | |
| By months, not years, is reckoned | 10 |
| Born in one July, she survived | |
| Alone to see a second. | |
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| Bright-featured, as the July sun | |
| Her little face still played in, | |
| And splendours, with her birth begun, | 15 |
| Had had no time for fading. | |
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| So, LILY, from those July hours, | |
| No wonder we should call her; | |
| She looked such kinship to the flowers, | |
| Was but a little taller. | 20 |
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| A Tuscan Lily,—only white, | |
| As Dante, in abhorrence | |
| Of red corruption, wished aright | |
| The lilies of his Florence. | |
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| We could not wish her whiter,—her | 25 |
| Who perfumed with pure blossom | |
| The house—a lovely thing to wear | |
| Upon a mother’s bosom! | |
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| This July creature thought perhaps | |
| Our speech not worth assuming; | 30 |
| She sate upon her parents’ laps | |
| And mimicked the gnat’s humming; | |
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| Said “father,” “mother,”—then left off | |
| For tongues celestial, fitter: | |
| Her hair had grown just long enough | 35 |
| To catch heaven’s jasper-glitter. | |
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| Babes! Love could always hear and see | |
| Behind the cloud that hid them. | |
| “Let little children come to Me, | |
| And do not thou forbid them. | 40 |
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| So, unforbidding, have we met, | |
| And gently here have laid her, | |
| Though winter is no time to get | |
| The flowers that should o’er-spread her: | |
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| We should bring pansies quick with spring, | 45 |
| Rose, violet, daffodilly, | |
| And also, above everything, | |
| White lilies for our Lily. | |
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| Nay, more than flowers, this grave exacts,— | |
| Glad, grateful attestations | 50 |
| Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts, | |
| With calm renunciations. | |
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| Her very mother with light feet | |
| Should leave the place too earthy, | |
| Saying, “The angels have thee, Sweet, | 55 |
| Because we are not worthy.” | |
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| But winter kills the orange-buds, | |
| The gardens in the frost are, | |
| And all the heart dissolves in floods, | |
| Remembering we have lost her. | 60 |
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| Poor earth, poor heart,—too weak, too weak | |
| To miss the July shining! | |
| Poor heart!—what bitter words we speak | |
| When God speaks of resigning! | |
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| Sustain this heart in us that faints, | 65 |
| Thou God, the self-existent! | |
| We catch up wild at parting saints | |
| And feel Thy heaven too distant. | |
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| The wind that swept them out of sin, | |
| Has ruffled all our vesture: | 70 |
| On the shut door that let them in, | |
| We beat with frantic gesture,— | |
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| To us, us also, open straight! | |
| The outer life is chilly; | |
| Are we too, like the earth, to wait | 75 |
| Till next year for our Lily? | |
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| —Oh, my own baby on my knees | |
| My leaping, dimpled treasure, | |
| At every word I write like these, | |
| Clasped close with stronger pressure! | 80 |
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| Too well my own heart understands,— | |
| At every word beats fuller— | |
| My little feet, my little hands, | |
| And hair of Lily’s colour! | |
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| But God gives patience, Love learns strength, | 85 |
| And Faith remembers promise, | |
| And Hope itself can smile at length | |
| On other hopes gone from us. | |
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| Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death, | |
| Through struggle, made more glorious: | 90 |
| This mother stills her sobbing breath, | |
| Renouncing yet victorious. | |
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| Arms, empty of her child, she lifts | |
| With spirit unbereaven,— | |
| “God will not all take back His gifts; | 95 |
| My Lily’s mine in heaven. | |
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| “Still mine! maternal rights serene | |
| Not given to another! | |
| The crystal bars shine faint between | |
| The souls of child and mother. | 100 |
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| “Meanwhile,” the mother cries “content! | |
| Our love was well divided: | |
| Its sweetness following where she went, | |
| Its anguish stayed where I did. | |
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| “Well done of God, to halve the lot, | 105 |
| And give her all the sweetness; | |
| To us, the empty room and cot,— | |
| To her, the Heaven’s completeness. | |
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| “To us, this grave,—to her, the rows | |
| The mystic palm-trees spring in; | 110 |
| To us, the silence in the house,— | |
| To her, the choral singing. | |
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| “For her, to gladden in God’s view,— | |
| For us, to hope and bear on. | |
| Grow, Lily, in thy garden new, | 115 |
| Beside the Rose of Sharon! | |
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| “Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped, | |
| In love more calm than this is, | |
| And may the angels dewy-lipped | |
| Remind thee of our kisses! | 120 |
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| “While none shall tell thee of our tears, | |
| These human tears now falling, | |
| Till, after a few patient years, | |
| One home shall take us all in. | |
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| “Child, father, mother,—who, left out? | 125 |
| Not mother, and not father! | |
| And when, our dying couch about, | |
| The natural mists shall gather, | |
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| “Some smiling angel close shall stand | |
| In old Correggio’s fashion, | 130 |
| And bear a LILY in his hand, | |
| For death’s ANNUNCIATION.” | |
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