“Only a baby!” the aching eyes
Look out on the busy street,
And fall on other laughing babes,
And the silent form at her feet.
“Only a baby!” a desolate home,
Those stricken hearts will know,
When they lay their darling down to rest,
’Neath the willows bending low.
“Only a baby!” how cold it seemed
To speak of the angel near,—
My heart went after the snowy form.
For its parents I breathed a prayer:
“Only a baby!” ah, the weary day
And the sleepless night,
The feverish longing—the aching heart—
For the baby gone from sight!
“Only a baby!” the heart sobs out,
What hopes lie shatter’d here,
The broken bud—the tiny frame,
An angel hovering near.
“Only a baby!”—the years creep by—
’Twill ever be, tho’ locks be gray;
Growing no older—only their babe;
As years before it passed away.
[To Helen,]
On Writing a Second Time in Her Album.
You plucked a grey hair from my head,
To-day, as you stood near me:
There’s plenty more, that are deftly hid
By wavy crimps,—I fear me.
’Tis many years since last I wrote,
With fun, and spirits plenty;
But now my fourth son has a vote,
And my babe’s not far from twenty.
Ah! so it goes; old time strides on,
Nor cares for years, and worries,
But knocks us here; and hits us there,
As past us quick he hurries;
We still are friends, and have our fun,
In spite of years, and trouble;
We’ve planted, reaped, and had our day.
And now we’re in the stubble.
[Rachel Elizabeth Patterson.]
Rachel Elizabeth Patterson, better known as Lizzie Patterson, is the daughter of William Patterson and Sarah (Catts) Patterson, and was born in Port Deposit, February 2, 1820. She is also the granddaughter of an Englishman who settled on Taylor’s Island, in Chesapeake Bay, where he owned considerable property, which by some means seems to have been lost by his family.
Her father at one time kept a clothing store in Port Deposit, where he died when the subject of this sketch was quite young, leaving a family of helpless children, who were soon scattered among strangers. Elizabeth was placed in a family residing a short distance south of the village of Rising Sun. While in this family she was seized with a violent illness, which confined her to bed for many months and from which she arose a cripple and a sufferer for life.
Her poetic talent began to manifest itself in those early days of suffering, and during subsequent years of confinement she found solace and recreation by composing her “Songs in Affliction,” which about thirty years ago, in accordance with the advice of her friends, she published in a small volume bearing that name. The first edition consisted of eight hundred, and was so well received as to warrant the publication of another one of five hundred copies. In 1872 she published another small volume, entitled “The Little Streamlet,” which contained some poems written since the publication of the first volume. Miss Patterson at present and for many years past has resided in Baltimore.