Classic Poem

A common record,—scarce the eye
Of any careless passer-by
Might stay to read the how and why,
So trite a doom:
An infant daughter, born to die,—
A nameless tomb.

Save only this,—the line you read
That speaks the parted spirit's need,
Rebels against a hideous creed
Of death or flame;
“Father! for larger life I plead,
Without a name.”

Unfathomed mystery of pain!
A wasted hope, a travail vain,
A fruitless birth of vacant brain
And nerveless hand;
The atoms fall to earth again,—
A moment's sand

The aimless stone an idler flings
Strikes on the lake a hundred rings,
They spread to faint imaginings,—
At last unseen;
So circling fancy feigns the things
That might have been;

She might have laughed the hours away,
A blushing maiden crowned with May,—
As country dame with locks of gray
Have filled her part,
Have watched her children's children play,
Still young at heart;

She might have fluttered, not so sage,
Caught in St. James's gilded cage,
She might have loved some silken page,
Or swordsman bold;
She might have erred,—that courtly age
Was none too cold

Enough,—'tis vain to speculate
On buried whims of love or hate,
On unfulfilled decrees of fate
To stand or fall;
When dreams are done, we pause and wait,—
“Can this be all?”

The germ of Life, so vainly sown,
The blade unsprung, the grain ungrown,
In one of yonder worlds unknown,
A meeter field,
May find a harvest all their own,
Of goodlier yield:

For if there be, from sun to sun,
New realms of Being scarce begun,
The Good, as Good, can never shun
That simple prayer;
Sleep softly, nameless little one,
We leave you there.