Lament IV

Thou hast constrained mine eyes, unholy Death,

To watch my dear child breathe her dying breath:

To watch thee shake the fruit unripe and clinging

While fear and grief her parents’ hearts were wringing.

Ah, never, never could my well-loved child

Have died and left her father reconciled:

Never but with a heart like heavy lead

Could I have watched her go, abandonèd.

And yet at no time could her death have brought

More cruel ache than now, nor bitterer thought;

For had God granted to her ample days

I might have walked with her down flowered ways

And left this life at last, content, descending

To realms of dark Persephone⁵, the all-ending,

Without such grievous sorrow in my heart,

Of which earth holdeth not the counterpart.

I marvel not that Niobe⁶, alone

Amid her dear, dead children, turned to stone.