| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | The New-born | | By Helen Hoyt |
| | From “Poems of Life and Death”
I HAVE heard them in the night— | |
| The cry of their fear, | |
| Because there is no light, | |
| Because they do not hear | |
| Familiar sounds and feel the familiar arm, | 5 |
| And they awake alone. | |
| Yet they have never known | |
| Danger or harm. | |
| What is their dread?— | |
| This dark about their bed? | 10 |
| But they are so lately come | |
| Out of the dark womb | |
| Where they were safely kept. | |
| That blackness was good; | |
| And the silence of that solitude | 15 |
| Wherein they slept | |
| Was kind. | |
| Where did they find | |
| Knowledge of death? | |
| Caution of darkness and cold? | 20 |
| These—of the little, new breath— | |
| Have they a prudence so old? | | | | |
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