Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/42

For lingering o'er the pallid face
    Was that expression mild,
With which a youthful mother's grace
    Doth lull her grieving child.

Those parted lips the babe beloved
    Had sooth'd with freezing breath,
And that cold arm's fond curve had proved
    His pillow even in death.

Yet still the fatal blasts would rove
    Wild through her clustering hair,
Those blasts which to a seraph's love
    Had changed a mother's care.

And oh! it was a fearful sight,
    As on with measured tread,
O'er many a dark and slippery height,
    They bare the beauteous dead.

The infant clasp'd in monkish arms
    Sprang from his broken rest,
And eager hid his cherub charms
    Deep in her marble breast.

"Boy,—boy,—'tis vain!"—yet fast the tears
    O'er furrow'd features ran,
To see how twine with infant years
    The miseries of man.

When thrice the morn with sceptre fair
    The angry clouds had quell'd,
With mass and dirge and murmur'd prayer
    The funeral rites they held.