So you see I was left with the baby. Could you think such a little boy
Could grow all the world to me, my all of sorrow or joy?
No hands touched him but mine—don't smile, lad—I washed him, and fed,
And watched till he fell asleep every night by his cradle-bed.
I carried him in my arms, and played with his curly hair,
His eyes, the picture of hers, were sometimes hard to bear,
But I grew a better man, Will, than ever before I had been,
With her baby boy to live for, and her grave to keep neat and green.
'Tis wonderful, Will, these children, how soon they come to know!
It didn't seem any time before he could laugh and crow,
And stretch out his little arms when he saw me coming nigh—
The best child ever born, and never the one to cry!
Sometimes I used to lift the hem of his baby-clothes
And nurse his tiny feet, pinkish-white, like a wild hedge-rose,
And wonder through what rough paths they would tread in the years to come—
I didn't think then they'd be taking the safest and surest home. . . .
Three years old when he died! and just beginning to talk,
To prattle to Rover and me, and toddle about in the walk!
It makes you sometimes doubt if things are so right after all,
When the weeds are left to flourish, and the blossoms are made to fall.
You've some of your own at home—you'd like to see him maybe?
It can only do you good, Will, to think upon him and me!
You'll feel the goodness of God as you never felt it before
When the young ones hear your footsteps, and rush to the cottage-door!
Do you hear that moaning noise? It's Rover down in the yard;
I'd a mind to shoot him the morn, and yet 'twould be rather hard;
The boy was fond o' the dog, and the poor brute seems to know—
Being old, and scarce able to crawl, he misses my darling so!
That's his hat on the peg, and yonder his poor little toys—
It grieves me above a bit that I've ever been vexed at the noise;
Now I'd give worlds to hear it, even though it were ten times more—
O Will! How my heart sinks down as we come near the bedroom door!
There he lies in his cot, so quiet and happy and still,
He looks more like his mother than ever I saw him, Will. . . .
What a selfish fool am I, to regret that he's gone from here,
For hasn't his face a smile, lad? and that's better sure than a tear!
Death is sweeter than life, and slumber is sweeter than pain.
'Tis such a hard fight, old man, and we have so little to gain!
Who knows what he might have come to had he lived to be old as we?
If life is a good thing, Will, 'tis a better thing not to be!
Those snowdrops he picked himself that he holds in his tiny hands,
Now he gathers the flowers of Paradise as clothed in white wings he stands
In the garden of God, looking upward to the throne of eternal grace,
With the light of ineffable love streaming down on the hush of his face.
Will, do you think he remembers? or has he forgotten it all?
The old dog crippled and blind, who always limped up at his call,
The pipe of the early thrushes, the bloom on the orchard-trees,
My face, that his eyes were fixed on when I took him to die on my knees?
O God! let him not forget me! Let him still remember, and wait,
And watch with a wistful longing when they open the golden gate;
Watch with a wistful longing till he sees me enter in,
Pure as a little child, and free forever from sin!<
But the house, Will, the lonely acres, the poor little empty chair,
The picture-books unopened, the silence upon the stair?
How shall I listen o' nights to the moan of the winds on the hill?
And the rush of the rain from the skies? God! how I shall miss him, Will!
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