Littell's Living Age/Volume 139/Issue 1800/Love and Loss

by Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel

LOVE AND LOSS

I.

DARK SPRING.

Now the mavis and the merle
⁠Lavish their full hearts in song,
Peach and almond boughs unfurl
⁠White and purple bloom along
A blue burning air,
And all is very fair.
But ah! the silence and the sorrow!
I may not borrow
Any anodyne for grief
From the joy of flower or leaf,
No healing to allay my pain
From the cool of air and rain;
Every sweet sound grew still,
Every fair color pale,
When his life began to wane;
They may never live again!
A child's voice and visage will
Ever more about me fail.
Ah! the silence and the sorrow!
Now my listless feet will go
Laboring ever as in snow:
Though the year with glowing wine
Fill the living veins of vine;
Though the glossy fig may swell,
And Night hear her Philomel;
Though the sweet lemon blossom breathe,
And fair Sun his falchion wreathe
With crimson roses at his foot,
All is desolate and mute;
Dark to-day, and dark to-morrow,
Ah! the silence and the sorrow!

II.

ONLY A LITTLE CHILD.

A Voice.
⁠Only a little child!
⁠Stone cold upon a bed!
⁠Is it for him you wail so wild,
⁠As though the very world were dead?
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠Threaten not the tranquil skies!

⁠Do not all things die?
⁠'Tis but a faded flower!
⁠Dear lives exhale perpetually
⁠With every fleeting hour.
⁠Rachael forever weeps her little ones;
⁠Forever Rizpah mourneth her slain sons.
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠Threaten not the tranquil skies!

⁠Only a little child!
⁠Long generations pass.
⁠Behold them flash a moment wild
⁠With stormlight, a pale headlong mass
⁠Of foam, into unfathomable gloom!
⁠Worlds and shed leaves have all one doom.
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠Threaten not the tranquil skies.

⁠Should earth's tremendous shade
⁠Spare only you and yours?
⁠Who regardeth empires fade
⁠Untroubled, who impassive pours
⁠Human joy, a mere spilt water,
⁠Revels red with human slaughter!
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠Threaten not the tranquil skies.

Another Voice.
⁠… Only a little child!
⁠He was the world to me.
⁠Pierced to the heart, insane, defiled,
⁠All holiest hope! foul mockery,
⁠Childhood's innocent mirth and rest.
⁠There is no God;
⁠The earth is virtue's funeral sod!

Another Voice.
⁠Only a little child!
⁠Ah! then, who brought him here?
⁠Who made him loving, fair, and mild,
⁠And to your soul so dear?
⁠His lowly spirit seemed divine,
⁠Burning in a heavenly shrine.
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠With pardon for the tranquil skies.

⁠Only a little child!
⁠Who sleeps upon God's heart!
⁠Jesus blessed our undefiled,
⁠Whom no power avails to part
⁠From the life of him who died
⁠And liveth, whatsoe'er betide!
⁠Whose are eyes
⁠Tranquiller than starlit skies?

⁠Only a little child!
⁠For whom all things are;
⁠Spring and summer, winter wild,
⁠Sea and earth, and every star,
⁠Time, the void, pleasure and pain.
⁠Hell and heaven, loss and gain.
⁠Life and death are his, and he
⁠Rests in God's eternity.
⁠Arise, arise!
⁠Love is holy, true, and wise,
⁠Mirrored in the tranquil skies.

III.

SLEEP.

Airily the leaves are playing
⁠In blue summer light;
Fugitive soft shadow laying
⁠Lovingly o'er marble white,
⁠Where he lies asleep.

Lilies of the valley bending
⁠Lowly bells amid the green;
Sweet moss-roses meekly lending
⁠Their soft beauty to the scene
⁠Of his quiet sleep.

All around him heather glowing
⁠Purple in the sun;
Sound of bees and bird o'erflowing
⁠Lull my lost, my little one,
⁠Lying there asleep.

Harsher sight or sound be banished,
⁠For my child is gone to rest;
These are telling of my vanished
⁠In the language of the blest,
⁠Wake him not from sleep!

Good Words.Roden Noel.