No tender kisses to be given;
No nicknames, "Dove" and "Mouse";
No merry frolics after tea, --
No baby in the house!
Clara Dolliver (18
From “ The Mother's Idol Broken ”
All in our marriage garden
Grew, smiling up to God, A bonnier flower than ever
Sucked the green warmth of the sod;
O, beautiful unfathomably
Its little life unfurled;
And crown of all things was our wee
White Rose of all the world.
From out a balmy bosom
Our bud of beauty grew;
It fed on smiles for sunshine,
On tears for daintier dew:
Aye nestling warm and tenderly,
Our leaves of love were curled
So close and close about our wee
White Rose of all the world.
With mystical faint fragrance
Our house of life she filled;
Revealed each hour some fairy tower
Where wingèd hopes might build !
We saw-though none like us might see--
Such precious promise pearled
Upon the petals of our wee
White Rose of all the world.
But cvermore the halo
Of angel-light increased, Like the mystery of moonlight
That folds some fairy feast.
Snow-white, snow-soft, snow-silently
Our darling bud uncurled,
And dropped in the grave--God's lap our wee
White Rose of all the world.
Our Rose was but in blossom,
Our life was but in spring, When down the solemn midnight
We heard the spirits sing,
“Another bud of infancy
With holy dews impearled!”
And in their hands they bore our wee
White Rose of all the world.
You scarce could think so small a thing
Could leave a loss so large;
Her little light such shadow fling
From dawn to sunset's marge.
In other springs our life may be
In bannered bloom unfurled, But never, never match our wee White Rose of all the world,
Gerald Massey (1828-1907]
INTO THE WORLD AND OUT
Into the world he looked with sweet surprise;
The children laughed so when they saw his eyes.
Into the world a rosy hand in doubt
He reached-a pale hand took one rosebud out.
"And that was all-quite all!” No, surely! But
The children cried so when his eyes were shut.
Sarah M. B. Piatt (1836
“BABY SLEEPS”
She is not dead, but sleepeth.-LUKE viii. 52.
THE baby wept;
The mother took it from the nurse's arms,
And hushed its fears, and soothed its vain alarms,
And baby slept.
Again it weeps, And God doth take it from the mother's arms, From present griefs, and future unknown harms,
And baby sleeps.
Samuel Hinds (1793-1872)
I
HAVE you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
The gates of heaven were left ajar:
With folded hands and dreamy eyes,
Wandering out of Paradise,
She saw this planet, like a star,
Hung in the glistening depths of even-
Its bridges, running to and fro,
O'er which the white-winged Angels go,
Bearing the holy Dead to heaven.
She touched a bridge of flowers--those feet,
So light they did not bend the bells
Of the celestial asphodels,
They fell like dew upon the flowers:
Then all the air grew strangely sweet.
And thus came dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours.
She came and brought delicious May;
The swallows built beneath the eaves;
Like sunlight, in and out the leaves
The robins went, the livelong day;
The lily swung its noiseless bell;
And on the porch the slender vine
Held out its cups of fairy wine.
How tenderly the twilights fell!
Oh, earth was full of singing-birds
And opening springtide flowers,
When the dainty Baby Bell
Came to this world of ours.
III
O Baby, dainty Baby Bell,
How fair she grew from day to day!
What woman-nature filled her eyes,
What poetry within them lay-
Those deep and tender twilight eyes,
So full of meaning, pure and bright
As if she yet stood in the light
Of those oped gates of Paradise.
And so we loved her more and more:
Ah, never in our hearts before
Was love so lovely born:
We felt we had a link between
This real world and that unseen-
The land beyond the morn;
And for the love of those dear eyes,
For love of her whom God led forth,
(The mother's being ceased on earth
When Baby came from Paradise,) -
For love of Him who smote our lives,
And woke the chords of joy and pain,
We said, Dear Christ!-our hearts bowed down
Like violets after rain.
And now the orchards, which were white
And pink with blossoms when she came,
Were rich in autumn's mellow prime;
The clustered apples burnt like flame,
The folded chestnut burst its shell,
The grapes hung purpling, range on range;
And time wrought just as rich a change
In little Baby Bell.
Her lissome form more perfect grew,
And in her features we could trace,
In softened curves, her mother's face.
Her angel-nature ripened too:
We thought her lovely when she came,
But she was holy, saintly now ..
Around her pale angelic brow
We saw a slender ring of fame.
God's hand had taken away the seal
That held the portals of her speech;
And oft she said a few strange words
Whose meaning lay beyond our reach.
She never was a child to us,
We never held her being's key;
We could not teach her holy things
Who was Christ's self in purity.
It came upon us by degrees,
We saw its shadow ere it fell-
The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Baby Bell.
We shuddered with unlanguaged pain,
And all our hopes were changed to fears,
And all our thoughts ran into tears
Like sunshine into rain.
We cried aloud in our belief,
“Oh, smite us gently, gently, God!
Teach us to bend and kiss the rod,
And perfect grow through grief.”
Ah! how we loved her, God can tell;
Iler heart was folded deep in ours.
Our hearts are broken, Baby Bell!
At last he came, the messenger,
The messenger from unseen lands:
And what did dainty Baby Bell?
She only crossed her little hands,
She only looked more meek and fair!
We parted back her silken hair,
We wove the roscs round her brow-
White buds, the summer's drifted snow-
Wrapped her from head to foot in flowers ...
And thus went dainty Baby Bell
Out of this world of ours.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1837–1907]
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