Miscellaneous Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

As having clasp'd a rose,
Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away,
My hand retains a little breath of sweet,
Holds still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.
Marston.

It seem'd like some sweet child, who smiling dies,
Leaving a kiss upon the mother's lips
She means to keep for ever.—There she sate
Silent in grief, and looking down, beheld
The marriage-ring that on her finger shone;
A gem of mystic beauty, which Love gave,
When he stood by her, crown'd with flowers;—and then
With gentle eye uprais'd, again she gaz'd
Upon that little image sleeping there,
Her bright and beautiful child, who had to her
Seem'd as the messenger of love divine
Whom she had nurs'd within her living heart;
And now transform'd to marble by the power
Lent to the sculptor's chisel—then she felt

Her life had pass'd into another sphere
Of being: and all pleasures, all delights,
Yea, and the common offices of life,
Essential duties, e'en as laws rever'd,
Were to her but as shadows, come to mock
Her loneliness—the very earth had lost
Its own substantial presence—its old powers
Were vanished—all she saw before her, were
Two cold, pale lips,—“a piece of childhood,” —torn
From the warm tenement that once it held.
And so she call'd on Memory, who came
With step too faithful, to her task;—again,
And yet again, responding to the call
Incessant,—still unsatisfied—once more
Of that fair creature questioned—still once more—
What of his pretty looks,—his words,—his acts
In all the graceful attitudes of youth,—
Her sweet and beautiful child.—Again, she thought,

How oft he wept, or smil'd, or sang his songs
In childish joy, carolling like the lark,
When the blue morning spreads into the sky,
Its feathers wet with dew—or when her knees
He clasp'd in infant tenderness,—so wild
With joy, as if his very soul would fly
Into his mother's bosom, and the tongue
Was still too feeble for the heart to give
Its fulness utterance.—So she sate and mourn'd
Her bright and beautiful child.—

The mother's look
Is still before me—'twas the look of all
That speaks the earthly tenement forlorn,
When Hope hath fled its home—it tells of that
The heritage which weeping Nature gives
Unto the helpless children of her love,
“To suffer and be silent.”—

“A piece of childhood.” —An expression taken, with much loss of its original beauty, from Fletcher's Philaster. Euphrasia, as the page, speaking of her life, which Philaster threatens to take from her, says,

“'tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of Childhood thrown away.”

See Mr. Dyce's edition, vol.1, Act v. Sc.2.