YOUR BABY STILL
A short time ago an old schoolmate friend wrote me that they had lost their darling—a baby boy of ten months, and the mother was grieving herself sick over her great loss. “Couldn’t you write something to console her—something to make a bright spot out in the future to look ahead to with hope?” he wrote. How easy to ask this, but how hard to comply. How impossible to wipe away the sorrow from a bleeding heart and persuade the heart to cease bleeding and the bereaved soul to cease its grieving.
After a little thought it struck me forcibly that the memories and recollections of a dead child must always picture the child as it was when death took it away. And I sat down and put myself in that mother’s place and wrote as though I were writing the words of hope that sometime would surely fill her loving soul. I print them now for the hundreds of other sorrowing mothers who see before them, day and night, the dear face of their darling who sleeps out in the church yard, the land where babies never grow old.
I could write out of that mother’s heart, because I, too, have a baby sleeping in the land of perpetual youth. Had she lived she would now be a grown woman—perhaps today weeping over a little grave where her own darling lay sleeping.
Weeping over his little bier,
Kissing the lips of her baby dear,
Touching the eyes in their endless sleep—
Dreaming, I see a mother weep.
Mother, he’ll be your baby still,
Let the changes bring whate’er they will;
When the coming years silver your hair,
You will dream of your baby fair;
Other sorrows your heart may fill—
He’ll be your darling baby still.
Tho’ he may lie in the churchyard cold,
In your dreams he’ll never grow old;
In your slumbers you’ll kiss his brow,
Sweet and pure as you see him now.
Ah, for ever your baby will
Be, in fond mem’ry, your baby still!
Other mothers are happy today
Kissing their darling’s tears away,
Looking far out in the world so wide,
Swelling their mother-heart with pride;
For they see their child to manhood grown—
Proud are they to call him their own;
Dreaming dreams of all he shall be—
The man they picture—the man they see;
Proud and defiant, leader of men,
Making history with tongue and pen.
Surely their baby must change to be
The full grown man of the picture they see.
Ah, better for her and her mother pride,
Better, ah, better that child had died
With innocent smile on his baby face,
Than live to manhood and disgrace.
“What news is this? Oh, tell me true!
What did the boy of my fond hopes do?
Murdered his sweetheart? Oh, loving God!
This comes from the wicked path he trod.
A drunken quarrel? She led him on!
And he’s a murderer! my son, my son!”
Mother, when bidding your child farewell,
With heartaches more than tongue can tell,
When laying him low in the cold, cold ground,
And tenderly heaping the little mound—
There’s a land of hope just over the hill,
Where your baby will be your baby still.
No news of him will ever pain
Your aching, loving heart again.
Silent he sleeps in the earth’s cool breast,
And when life’s sun has set, in the west,
And you lie down at his side, he will
Be your darling baby still.
Only a little while ahead—
A little nap for the silent dead—
A little trouble, and sorrow, and pain,
And you will be with your child again.
Safer with you is the child you find
Than the full-grown man you leave behind.
And tho’ the promised future is dim,
’Tis enough to know—you shall sleep with him,
And all through eternity your baby will
Be your darling baby still.