# Littell's Living Age/Volume 139/Issue 1800/Love and Loss

LOVE AND LOSS
I.
* DARK SPRING.
* Now the mavis and the merle
* Lavish their full hearts in song,
* Peach and almond boughs unfurl
* White and purple bloom along
* A blue burning air,
* And all is very fair.
* But ah! the silence and the sorrow!
* I may not borrow
* Any anodyne for grief
* From the joy of flower or leaf,
* No healing to allay my pain
* From the cool of air and rain;
* Every sweet sound grew still,
* Every fair color pale,
* When his life began to wane;
* They may never live again!
* A child's voice and visage will
* Ever more about me fail.
* Ah! the silence and the sorrow!
* Now my listless feet will go
* Laboring ever as in snow:
* Though the year with glowing wine
* Fill the living veins of vine;
* Though the glossy fig may swell,
* And Night hear her Philomel;
* Though the sweet lemon blossom breathe,
* And fair Sun his falchion wreathe
* With crimson roses at his foot,
* All is desolate and mute;
* Dark to-day, and dark to-morrow,
* Ah! the silence and the sorrow!
II.
* ONLY A LITTLE CHILD.
* A Voice.
* Only a little child!
* Stone cold upon a bed!
* Is it for him you wail so wild,
* As though the very world were dead?
* Arise, arise!
* Threaten not the tranquil skies!
* Do not all things die?
* 'Tis but a faded flower!
* Dear lives exhale perpetually
* With every fleeting hour.
* Rachael forever weeps her little ones;
* Forever Rizpah mourneth her slain sons.
* Arise, arise!
* Threaten not the tranquil skies!
* Only a little child!
* Long generations pass.
* Behold them flash a moment wild
* With stormlight, a pale headlong mass
* Of foam, into unfathomable gloom!
* Worlds and shed leaves have all one doom.
* Arise, arise!
* Threaten not the tranquil skies.
* Should earth's tremendous shade
* Spare only you and yours?
* Who regardeth empires fade
* Untroubled, who impassive pours
* Human joy, a mere spilt water,
* Revels red with human slaughter!
* Arise, arise!
* Threaten not the tranquil skies.
* Another Voice.
* … Only a little child!
* He was the world to me.
* Pierced to the heart, insane, defiled,
* All holiest hope! foul mockery,
* Childhood's innocent mirth and rest.
* There is no God;
* The earth is virtue's funeral sod!
* Another Voice.
* Only a little child!
* Ah! then, who brought him here?
* Who made him loving, fair, and mild,
* And to your soul so dear?
* His lowly spirit seemed divine,
* Burning in a heavenly shrine.
* Arise, arise!
* With pardon for the tranquil skies.
* Only a little child!
* Who sleeps upon God's heart!
* Jesus blessed our undefiled,
* Whom no power avails to part
* From the life of him who died
* And liveth, whatsoe'er betide!
* Whose are eyes
* Tranquiller than starlit skies?
* Only a little child!
* For whom all things are;
* Spring and summer, winter wild,
* Sea and earth, and every star,
* Time, the void, pleasure and pain.
* Hell and heaven, loss and gain.
* Life and death are his, and he
* Rests in God's eternity.
* Arise, arise!
* Love is holy, true, and wise,
* Mirrored in the tranquil skies.
III.
* SLEEP.
* Airily the leaves are playing
* In blue summer light;
* Fugitive soft shadow laying
* Lovingly o'er marble white,
* Where he lies asleep.
* Lilies of the valley bending
* Lowly bells amid the green;
* Sweet moss-roses meekly lending
* Their soft beauty to the scene
* Of his quiet sleep.
* All around him heather glowing
* Purple in the sun;
* Sound of bees and bird o'erflowing
* Lull my lost, my little one,
* Lying there asleep.
* Harsher sight or sound be banished,
* For my child is gone to rest;
* These are telling of my vanished
* In the language of the blest,
* Wake him not from sleep!
* Good Words.Roden Noel.