On a Dead Child
Perfect little body, without fault or
stain on thee,
With
promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
Though
cold and stark and bare,
The bloom and the charm of life doth
awhile remain on thee.
Thy mother’s treasure wert
thou;—alas! no longer
To
visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be
Thy
father’s pride;—ah, he
Must gather his faith together, and
his strength make stronger.
To me, as I move thee now in the last
duty,
Dost
thou with a turn or gesture anon respond;
Startling
my fancy fond
With a chance attitude of the head, a
freak of beauty.
Thy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my
finger, and holds it:
But
the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff;
Yet
feels to my hand as if
’Twas still thy will, thy pleasure
and trust that enfolds it.
So I lay thee there, thy sunken
eyelids closing,—
Go
lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!—
Propping
thy wise, sad head,
Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest
disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content
thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?
To
a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The
vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but
to warm thee and awaken thee?
Ah! little at best can all our hopes
avail us
To
lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling,
alone we embark,
And the things we have seen and have
known and have heard of, fail us.
Bridges, Robert. "On
a Dead Child." Poetry Foundation. Web. <
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175246 >
This
melancholy piece by Robert Bridges includes the three key elements of an elegy,
but only really illustrates the two of the three stages of loss quite clearly,
the vast majority of the poem being grief and sorrow for the mournful event. In
the beginning of the poem, the speaker laments the child’s death when he opens
the poem with the idea that a child had died. He expresses grief over what the
child could have been if he had lived but now cannot be and says, “With promise
of strength and manhood full and fair!” Then, later the speaker moves on to the
second stage where he begins to praise the dead child and discuss how great he
was which can be seen when the speaker refers to the child as “thy father’s
pride” and “thy mother’s treasure wert thou.” More sorrow and grief is
intertwined with these parts as well because after the speaker praises the dead
child, they cry out and say “alas! no longer,” basically saying though this
child was beloved, they are no more. However, when we get to the third stage,
this one is a bit more fleeting and less prevalent in the poem than the others.
Later in the poem, the speaker mostly reverts back to discussing the sadness of
the child’s death. The speaker also questions “Death, whither hath he taken
thee? To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?” which
could be interpreted as some sort of consolation or solace because it seems
that the speaker is trying to reconcile the death and hoping that the child was
taken to a better place, but it is not as obvious as the other elements.
Through the elegy, it seems
that the speaker mostly is making a point about the sadness and grief of death,
which the majority of the poem is consumed with. At the very end of the poem, when
the speaker says “little at best can all our hopes avail us To lift this
sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,” the speaker reinforces this idea
because he basically says that when a death occurs, there really is nothing
that makes our sorrows any better.
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