Pocahontas, and Other Poems/Babe Buried at Sea
BABE BURIED AT SEA.
The deep sea took the dead. It was a babe
Like sculptur'd marble, pure and beautiful,
That lonely to its yawning gulfs went down.
— Poor cradled nursling — no fond arm was there
To wrap thee in its folds; no lullaby
Came from the green sea-monster, as he laid
His shapeless head thy polished brow beside,
One moment wondering at the beauteous spoil
On which he fed. Old Ocean heeded not
This added unit to his myriad dead:
But in the bosom of the tossing ship
Rose up a burst of anguish, wild and loud,
From the vex'd fountain of a mother's love.
— The lost! The lost! Oft shall her startled dream
Catch the drear echo of the sullen plunge
That whelm'd the uncoffin'd body — oft her eye
Strain wide through midnight's long unslumbering watch,
Remembering how his soft sweet breathing seem'd
Like measur'd music in a lily's cup,
And how his tiny shout of rapture swelled,
When closer to her bosom's core she drew
His eager lip.
Who thus, with folded arms,
And head declin'd, doth seem to count the waves,
And yet to heed them not? The sorrowing sire
Doth mark the last, faint ripple, where his child
Sank down into the waters. Busy thought
Turns to his far home, and those little ones
Whom sporting 'mid their favourite lawn he left,
And troubled fancy shows the weeping there,
When he shall seat them once more on his knee,
And tell them how the baby that they lov'd
Hid its pale cheek within its mother's breast,
And pin'd away and died — yet found no grave
Beneath the church-yard turf, where they might plant
The lowly mound with flowers.
But tell them, too,
O father! as a balsam for their grief,
That He who guards the water-lily's seed,
Through the long winter, and remembereth well
To bring its lip of snow and broad green leaf
Up from the darkness of its slimy cell
To meet the summer sun — will not forget
Their little brother, in his ocean bed,
But raise him from the deep, and call him forth
With brighter beauty, and a glorious form,
Never to fade or die.—