A Baby's Death

I.     A little soul scarce fledged for earth     Takes wing with heaven again for goal     Even while we hailed as fresh from birth     A little soul.     Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,     Not knowing beyond this blind world's girth     What things are writ in heaven's full scroll.     Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,     And all things held in time's control     Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth     A little soul. II.     The little feet that never trod     Earth, never strayed in field or street,     What hand leads upward back to God     The little feet?     A rose in June's most honied heat,     When life makes keen the kindling sod,     Was not so soft and warm and sweet.     Their pilgrimage's period     A few swift moons have seen complete     Since mother's hands first clasped and shod     The little feet. III.     The little hands that never sought     Earth's prizes, worthless all as sands,     What gift has death, God's servant, brought     The little hands?     We ask:    but love's self silent stands,     Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought     To search where death's dim heaven expands.     Ere this, perchance, though love know nought,     Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands,     Where hands of guiding angels caught     The little hands. IV.     The little eyes that never knew     Light other than of dawning skies,     What new life now lights up anew     The little eyes?     Who knows but on their sleep may rise     Such light as never heaven let through     To lighten earth from Paradise?     No storm, we know, may change the blue     Soft heaven that haply death descries     No tears, like these in ours, bedew     The little eyes. V.     Was life so strange, so sad the sky,     So strait the wide world's range,     He would not stay to wonder why     Was life so strange?     Was earth's fair house a joyless grange     Beside that house on high     Whence Time that bore him failed to estrange?     That here at once his soul put by     All gifts of time and change,     And left us heavier hearts to sigh     'Was life so strange?' VI.     Angel by name love called him, seeing so fair     The sweet small frame;     Meet to be called, if ever man's child were,     Angel by name.     Rose-bright and warm from heaven's own heart he came,     And might not bear     The cloud that covers earth's wan face with shame.     His little light of life was all too rare     And soft a flame:     Heaven yearned for him till angels hailed him there     Angel by name. VII.     The song that smiled upon his birthday here     Weeps on the grave that holds him undefiled     Whose loss makes bitterer than a soundless tear     The song that smiled.     His name crowned once the mightiest ever styled     Sovereign of arts, and angel:    fate and fear     Knew then their master, and were reconciled.     But we saw born beneath some tenderer sphere     Michael, an angel and a little child,     Whose loss bows down to weep upon his bier     The song that smiled.