Poems (Tynan)/The Child in Heaven

by Katharine Tynan

THE CHILD IN HEAVEN

The nursery windows were cold and black,
 The nursery hearth it was gray and sad;
She moaned for the child that would never come back,
 Her heart was broken for her little lad.
She had folded his garments and put them away,
 She had hidden his cradle quite out of sight:
But the child was glad in the light of day,
 While she was caught in the bitter night.

He thinks of his mother through all that cheer;
He would never forget in a hundred year.

The silence ached for the baby's cry.
 O silence, silence and loneliness!
And the thought of the empty nursery
 Cried at her heart with a keen distress—
Knocked at her heart like a ghost of the night,
 Followed her ever or near or far:
But her little boy he is clad in white,
 In the land that is over the morning star.

He thinks of his mother through all that cheer;
He would never forget in a hundred year.

His bed was soft as a nest of roses,
 His robes were all of the linen spun,
He had taken naught but a handful of posies
 When he went out on his way alone—
When he went out where she might not follow,
 And left her stricken and cold and bare,
His radiant journey by hill and hollow,
 To the dear God's House in the glittering air

He thinks of his mother through all that cheer
He would never forget in a hundred year.

She will come one day to God's nursery,
 Where His little babies are safe and warm
And lift the little one to her knee,
 And lose the ache of the empty arm,
And lose the ache of the empty heart,
 And fashion newly Love's empty nest,
And kiss his brows and his lips apart.
 And give him milk from her lonely breast.

He thinks of his mother through all that cheer;
He would never forget in a hundred year.