Poems (Hale)/"Suffer little Children to come unto me"

by Mary Whitwell Hale

"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME."

List to the Master's gracious voice,
Which bids the sorrowing heart rejoice,
Even though the tomb's dark portals close
Above the slumbering form's repose:
Angels their holy vigils keep
Around its calm, unearthly sleep.

Come ye around her couch to bend:
Faith can its quickening influence lend.
Look on the form reposing there,
In death so beautifully fair.
Pure temple for the immortal guest,
Meet type of heaven's all-perfect rest.

What though your tears as dew be shed
Around the loved, the early dead?
What though no more that speaking eye
To greet your answering gaze be nigh?
What though the gay, glad spring-note be
As a hushed strain of memory?

Has she not met, in yon bright sphere,
Those vanished ones, to love so dear?
Was not the Saviour's blessing shed
As incense o'er the infant head?
"To me their sinless souls be given:
Of such the kingdom is of heaven."

Fearless, that gracious call she heard;
And, as the heaven-aspiring bird
Plumes joyfully its golden wing,
Mid realms of purer light to sing,
So did her spotless soul ascend,
Before her Maker's throne to bend.

Life was to her a joyous dream:
She wakes where heaven's rich glories beam.
Calmly, as to her earthly rest,
Her fair young head its pillow pressed:
The angel-guard ye might not see,
Nor hear their strain of melody.

Would ye recall her from that sphere,
Though ransomed by one prayer, one tear?
A few short years of grief and pain,
And ye shall meet your own again,
Where life's pure tide, unsullied swells,
And love shall breathe no sad farewells.