The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume IV Part 1

The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Volume IV.

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

POEMS

A CHILD'S GRAVE AT FLORENCE.

A.A.E.C.

Born, July 1848. Died, November 1849

I.

Of English blood, of Tuscan birth, What country should we give her?

Instead of any on the earth, The civic Heavens receive her.

II.

And here among the English tombs In Tuscan ground we lay her, While the blue Tuscan sky endomes Our English words of prayer.

III.

A little child!--how long she lived, By months, not years, is reckoned: Born in one July, she survived Alone to see a second.

IV.

Bright-featured, as the July sun Her little face still played in, And splendours, with her birth begun, Had had no time for fading.

V.

So, LILY, from those July hours, No wonder we should call her; She looked such kins.h.i.+p to the flowers,-- Was but a little taller.

VI.

A Tuscan Lily,--only white, As Dante, in abhorrence Of red corruption, wished aright The lilies of his Florence.

VII.

We could not wish her whiter,--her Who perfumed with pure blossom The house--a lovely thing to wear Upon a mother's bosom!

VIII.

This July creature thought perhaps Our speech not worth a.s.suming; She sat upon her parents' laps And mimicked the gnat's humming;

IX.

Said "father," "mother"--then left off, For tongues celestial, fitter: Her hair had grown just long enough To catch heaven's jasper-glitter.

X.

Babes! Love could always hear and see Behind the cloud that hid them.

"Let little children come to Me, And do not thou forbid them."

XI.

So, unforbidding, have we met, And gently here have laid her, Though winter is no time to get The flowers that should o'erspread her:

XII.

We should bring pansies quick with spring, Rose, violet, daffodilly, And also, above everything, White lilies for our Lily.

XIII.

Nay, more than flowers, this grave exacts,-- Glad, grateful attestations Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts, With calm renunciations.

XIV.

Her very mother with light feet Should leave the place too earthy, Saying "The angels have thee, Sweet, Because we are not worthy."

XV.

But winter kills the orange-buds, The gardens in the frost are, And all the heart dissolves in floods, Remembering we have lost her.

XVI.

Poor earth, poor heart,--too weak, too weak To miss the July s.h.i.+ning!

Poor heart!--what bitter words we speak When G.o.d speaks of resigning!

XVII.

Sustain this heart in us that faints, Thou G.o.d, the self-existent!

We catch up wild at parting saints And feel Thy heaven too distant.

XVIII.

The wind that swept them out of sin Has ruffled all our vesture: On the shut door that let them in We beat with frantic gesture,--

XIX.

To us, us also, open straight!

The outer life is chilly; Are _we_ too, like the earth, to wait Till next year for our Lily?

XX.