TO AN ORPHAN CHILD
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H, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s;Hers couldst thou wholly be,My light in thee would outglow all in others;She would relive to me.But niggard Nature’s trick of birthBars, lest she overjoy,Renewal of the loved on earthSave with alloy. The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,For love and loss like mine—No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;Only with fickle eyne.To her mechanic artistryMy dreams are all unknown,And why I wish that thou couldst beBut One’s alone! [Picture: Sketch of broken key?] NATURE’S QUESTIONING WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,Field, flock, and lonely tree,All seem to gaze at meLike chastened children sitting silent in a school; Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,As though the master’s waysThrough the long teaching daysTheir first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne. And on them stirs, in lippings mere(As if once clear in call,But now scarce breathed at all)—“We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here! “Has some Vast Imbecility,Mighty to build and blend,But impotent to tend,Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry? “Or come we of an AutomatonUnconscious of our pains? . . .Or are we live remainsOf Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone? “Or is it that some high Plan betides,As yet not understood,Of Evil stormed by Good,We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?” Thus things around. No answerer I . . .Meanwhile the winds, and rains,And Earth’s old glooms and painsAre still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.
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