“The loves of earth your being can spare,
But never the grave, for mother is there.”
I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,
And stole me back to my long, long rest.
And here I lie with him under the stars,
Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;
Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms,
So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.
And heaven may open its shimmering doors,
And saints make music on pearly floors,
And hell may yawn to its infinite sea,
But they never can take my baby from me.
For so much a part of my soul he hath grown
That God doth know of it high on his throne.
And here I lie with him under the flowers
That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,
With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea,
Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.
[1] This poem was suggested by the following passage in Tyler’s Animism: “The pathetic German superstition that the dead mother’s coming back in the night to suckle the baby she had left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed down in the bed where she lay.”