Elizabeth Barrett Browning - A Child's Grave at Florence (The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. IV) lyrics
[Elizabeth Barrett Browning - A Child's Grave at Florence The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. IV lyrics]
Of English blood, of Tuscan birth
What country should we give her?
Instead of any on the earth
The civic Heavens receive her
And here among the English tombs
In Tuscan ground we lay her
While the blue Tuscan sky endomes
Our English words of prayer
A little child! how long she lived
By months, not years, is reckoned:
Born in one July, she survived
Alone to see a second
Bright-featured, as the July sun
Her little face still played in
And splendours, with her birth begun
Had had no time for fading
So, Lily, from those July hours
No wonder we should call her
She looked such kinship to the flowers
Was but a little taller
A Tuscan Lily, only white
As Dante, in abhorrence
Of red corruption, wished aright
The lilies of his Florence
We could not wish her whiter, her
Who perfumed with pure blossom
The house a lovely thing to wear
Upon a mother’s bosom!
This July creature thought perhaps
Our speech not worth assuming
She sat upon her parents’ laps
And mimicked the gnat’s humming
Said "father, " "mother" then left off
For tongues celestial, fitter:
Her hair had grown just long enough
To catch heaven’s jasper-glitter
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"
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:
We should bring pansies quick with spring
Rose, violet, daffodilly
And also, above everything
White lilies for our Lily
Nay, more than flowers, this grave exacts
Glad, grateful attestations
Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts
With calm renunciations
Her very mother with light feet
Should leave the place too earthy
Saying "The angels have thee, Sweet
Because we are not worthy"
But winter kills the orange-buds
The gardens in the frost are
And all the heart dissolves in floods
Remembering we have lost her
Poor earth, poor heart, too weak, too weak
To miss the July shining!
Poor heart! what bitter words we speak
When God speaks of resigning!
Sustain this heart in us that faints
Thou God, the self-existent!
We catch up wild at parting saints
And feel Thy heaven too distant
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
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?
Oh, my own baby on my knees
My leaping, dimpled treasure
At every word I write like these
Clasped close with stronger pressure!
Too well my own heart understands
At every word beats fuller
My little feet, my little hands
And hair of Lily’s colour!
But God gives patience, Love learns strength
And Faith remembers promise
And Hope it'self can smile at length
On other hopes gone from us
Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death
Through struggle made more glorious:
This mother stills her sobbing breath
Renouncing yet victorious
Arms, empty of her child, she lifts
With spirit unbereaven
"God will not all take back His gifts
My Lily’s mine in heaven
"Still mine! maternal rights serene
Not given to another!
The crystal bars shine faint between
The souls of child and mother
"Meanwhile, " the mother cries, "content!
Our love was well divided:
Its sweetness following where she went
Its anguish stayed where I did
"Well done of God, to halve the lot
And give her all the sweetness
To us, the empty room and cot
To her, the Heaven’s completeness
"To us, this grave, to her, the rows
The mystic palm-trees spring in
To us, the silence in the house
To her, the choral singing
"For her, to gladden in God’s view
For us, to hope and bear on
Grow, Lily, in thy garden new
Beside the Rose of Sharon!
"Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped
In love more calm than this is
And may the angels dewy-lipped
Remind thee of our kisses!
"While none shall tell thee of our tears
These human tears now falling
Till, after a few patient years
One home shall take us all in
"Child, father, mother who, left out?
Not mother, and not father!
And when, our dying couch about
The natural mists shall gather
"Some smiling angel close shall stand
In old Correggio’s fashion
And bear a Lily in his hand
For death’s ANNUCIATION"
What country should we give her?
Instead of any on the earth
The civic Heavens receive her
And here among the English tombs
In Tuscan ground we lay her
While the blue Tuscan sky endomes
Our English words of prayer
A little child! how long she lived
By months, not years, is reckoned:
Born in one July, she survived
Alone to see a second
Bright-featured, as the July sun
Her little face still played in
And splendours, with her birth begun
Had had no time for fading
So, Lily, from those July hours
No wonder we should call her
She looked such kinship to the flowers
Was but a little taller
A Tuscan Lily, only white
As Dante, in abhorrence
Of red corruption, wished aright
The lilies of his Florence
We could not wish her whiter, her
Who perfumed with pure blossom
The house a lovely thing to wear
Upon a mother’s bosom!
This July creature thought perhaps
Our speech not worth assuming
She sat upon her parents’ laps
And mimicked the gnat’s humming
Said "father, " "mother" then left off
For tongues celestial, fitter:
Her hair had grown just long enough
To catch heaven’s jasper-glitter
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"
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:
We should bring pansies quick with spring
Rose, violet, daffodilly
And also, above everything
White lilies for our Lily
Nay, more than flowers, this grave exacts
Glad, grateful attestations
Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts
With calm renunciations
Her very mother with light feet
Should leave the place too earthy
Saying "The angels have thee, Sweet
Because we are not worthy"
But winter kills the orange-buds
The gardens in the frost are
And all the heart dissolves in floods
Remembering we have lost her
Poor earth, poor heart, too weak, too weak
To miss the July shining!
Poor heart! what bitter words we speak
When God speaks of resigning!
Sustain this heart in us that faints
Thou God, the self-existent!
We catch up wild at parting saints
And feel Thy heaven too distant
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
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?
Oh, my own baby on my knees
My leaping, dimpled treasure
At every word I write like these
Clasped close with stronger pressure!
Too well my own heart understands
At every word beats fuller
My little feet, my little hands
And hair of Lily’s colour!
But God gives patience, Love learns strength
And Faith remembers promise
And Hope it'self can smile at length
On other hopes gone from us
Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death
Through struggle made more glorious:
This mother stills her sobbing breath
Renouncing yet victorious
Arms, empty of her child, she lifts
With spirit unbereaven
"God will not all take back His gifts
My Lily’s mine in heaven
"Still mine! maternal rights serene
Not given to another!
The crystal bars shine faint between
The souls of child and mother
"Meanwhile, " the mother cries, "content!
Our love was well divided:
Its sweetness following where she went
Its anguish stayed where I did
"Well done of God, to halve the lot
And give her all the sweetness
To us, the empty room and cot
To her, the Heaven’s completeness
"To us, this grave, to her, the rows
The mystic palm-trees spring in
To us, the silence in the house
To her, the choral singing
"For her, to gladden in God’s view
For us, to hope and bear on
Grow, Lily, in thy garden new
Beside the Rose of Sharon!
"Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped
In love more calm than this is
And may the angels dewy-lipped
Remind thee of our kisses!
"While none shall tell thee of our tears
These human tears now falling
Till, after a few patient years
One home shall take us all in
"Child, father, mother who, left out?
Not mother, and not father!
And when, our dying couch about
The natural mists shall gather
"Some smiling angel close shall stand
In old Correggio’s fashion
And bear a Lily in his hand
For death’s ANNUCIATION"