THE
CHILD'S BURIAL IN SPRING.
I
Where Ocean's waves to the hollow caves murmur a low wild hymn,
In pleasant musing I pursued my solitary way;
Then upwards wending from the shore, amid the woodlands dim,
From the gentle height, like a map in sight, the downward country lay.
II
'Twas in the smile of “green Aprile,”
“Grene Aprile,” the
favourite appellation of the month by
Chaucer, Spenser, Browne, and the older poets.
A prose character, equally impregnated with emerald, is
given to its personification, in a curious duodecimo of 1681,
entitled “The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet,” quoted in
Hone's “Every-Day Book,” (vol. ii. 517,) by Charles Lamb, in
which the fair author, Anne Wooley, thus describes him:—
“Aprile—A young man in green, with a garland of myrtle, and
hawthorn buds; Winged; in one hand Primroses and Violets, in the
other the sign Taurus.”
a cloudless noontide clear;
In ecstasy the birds sang forth from many a leafing tree;
Both bud and bloom, with fresh perfume, proclaim'd the awaken'd year;
And Earth, array'd in beauty's robes, seem'd Heaven itself to be.
III
So cheerfully the sun shone out, so smilingly the sky
O'erarch'd green earth, so pleasantly the stream meander'd on,
So joyous was the murmur of the honey-bee and fly,
That of our fall, which ruin'd all, seem'd traces few or none.
IV
Then hopes, whose gilded pageantry wore all the hues of truth—
Elysian thoughts—Arcadian dreams—the poet's fabling strain—
Again seem'd shedding o'er our world an amaranthine youth,
And left no vestiges behind of death, decay, or pain.
V
At length I reach'd a churchyard gate—a churchyard? Yes! but there
Breathed out such calm serenity o'er every thing around,
That “the joy of grief” (as Ossian sings) o'erbalm'd the very air,
And the place was less a mournful place than consecrated ground.
VI
Beneath the joyous noontide sun, beneath the cloudless sky,
'Mid bees that humm'd, and birds that sang, and flowers that gemm'd the wild,
The sound of measured steps was heard—a grave stood yawning by—
And lo! in sad procession slow, the Funeral of a Child!
VII
I saw the little coffin borne unto its final rest;
The dark mould shovell'd o'er it, and replaced the daisied sod;
I mark'd the deep convulsive throes that heaved the Father's breast,
As he return'd (too briefly given!) that loan of love to God!
VIII
Then rose in my rebellious heart unhallow'd thoughts and wild,
Daring the inscrutable decrees of Providence to scan—
How death should be allotted to a pure, a sinless child,
And length of days the destiny of sinful, guilty man!
IX
The laws of the material world seem'd beautiful and clear;
The day and night, the bloom and blight, and seasons as they roll
In regular vicissitude to form a circling year,
Made up of parts dissimilar, and yet a perfect whole.
X
But darkness lay o'er the moral way which man is told to tread;
A shadow veil'd the beam divine by Revelation lent:
“How awfully mysterious are thy ways, O Heaven!” I said;
“We see not whence, nor know for what fate's arrows oft are sent!
XI
Under the shroud of the sullen cloud, when the hills are capp'd with snow,
When the moaning breeze, through leafless trees, bears tempest on its wing—
In the Winter's wrath, we think of death; but not when lilies blow,
And, Lazarus-like, from March's tomb walks forth triumphant Spring.
XII
As in distress o'er this wilderness I mused of stir and strife,
Where, 'mid the dark, seem'd scarce a mark our tangled path to scan,
A shadow o'er the season fell; a cloud o'er human life—
A veil to be by Eternity but ne'er by time withdrawn!
