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A Poet's Harvest Home

Being One Hundred Short Poems: By William Bell Scott ... With an Aftermath of Twenty Short Poems
  
  

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INFANCY.
  
  
  
  
  
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170

INFANCY.

SUGGESTED BY A RAILWAY ACCIDENT.

Let him lie still,” the young wife cried, “right soon
I shall be back,” and on my lap she laid
Her swaddled nurseling; startled even dismayed,
I looked down on the face like a white moon,
On the closed eyes and open mouth, no spoon
Had yet touched, and could see its breathing made
The folds expand in which it was arrayed:
It was alive, yet knew not night from noon.
Beautiful was it? I can scarcely say.
I never held so young a thing before;
But wonderful it was to me, and may
Be likened to a shrine within closed door,
Closed, unlit, but from whence a breath made way
Te Deum laudamus, saying o'er and o'er.