Poems (Dorr)/Peradventure

by Julia Caroline Dorr

PERADVENTURE

I am thinking to-night of the little child
 That lay on my breast three summer days,
Then swiftly, silently, dropped from sight,
 While my soul cried out in sore amaze.

It is fifteen years ago to-night;
 Somewhere, I know, he has lived them through,
Perhaps with never a thought or dream
 Of the mother-heart he never knew!

Is he yet but a babe? or has he grown
 To be like his brothers, fair and tall,
With a clear, bright eye, and a springing step,
 And a voice that rings like a bugle call?

I loved him. The rose in his waxen hand
 Was wet with the dew of my falling tears;
I have kept the thought of my baby's grave
 Through all the length of these changeful years.

Yet the love I gave him was not like that
 I give to-day to my other boys,
Who have grown beside me, and turned to me
 In all their griefs and in all their joys.

Do you think he knows it? I wonder much
 If the dead are passionless, cold, and dumb;
If into the calm of the deathless years
 No thrill of a human love may come!

Perhaps sometimes from the upper air
 He has seen me walk with his brothers three
Or felt in the tender twilight hour
 The breath of the kisses they gave to me!

Over his birthright, lost so soon,
 Perhaps he has sighed as the swift years flew;
O child of my heart! you shall find somewhere
 The love that on earth you never knew!