Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BABE BURIED AT SEA, by LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The deep sea took the dead. It was a babe Last Line: Never to fade, nor die. -- Subject(s): Death - Children; Sea; Death - Babies; Ocean | ||||||||
THE deep sea took the dead. It was a babe Like sculptur'd marble, pure and beautiful That lonely to its yawning gulfs went down. -- Poor cradled nursling -- no fond arm was there To wrap thee in its folds; no lullaby Came from the green sea-monster, as he laid His shapeless head, thy polished brow beside, One moment wondering at the beauteous spoil On which he fed. Old Ocean heeded not This added unit to his myriad dead; But in the bosom of the tossing ship Rose up a burst of anguish, wild and loud, From the vex'd fountain of a mother's love, -- The lost! The lost! Oft shall her startled dream, Catch the drear echo of the sullen plunge That whelm'd the uncoffin'd body -- oft her eye Strain wide through midnight's long unslumbering watch Remembering how his soft sweet breathing seem'd Like measur'd music in a lily's cup, And how his tiny shout of rapture swelled, When closer to her bosom's core, she drew His eager lip. Who thus, with folded arms, And head declin'd, doth seem to count the waves, And yet to heed them not? The sorrowing sire, Doth mark the last, faint ripple, where his child Sank down into the waters. Busy thought Turns to his far home, and those little ones, Whom sporting 'mid their favorite lawn he left, And troubled fancy shows the weeping there, When he shall seat them once more on his knee, And tell them how the baby that they lov'd, Hid its pale cheek within its mother's breast, And pin'd away and died -- yet found no grave Beneath the church-yard turf, where they might plant The lowly mound with flowers. But tell them too, Oh father! as a balsam for their grief, That He who guards the water-lily's germ, Through the long winter, and remembereth well To bring its lip of snow and broad green leaf Up from the darkness of its slimy cell To meet the summer sun -- will not forget Their little brother, in his ocean bed, But raise him from the deep, and call him forth With brighter beauty, and a glorious form, Never to fade, nor die. -- | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HALL OF OCEAN LIFE by JOHN HOLLANDER JULY FOURTH BY THE OCEAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE FIGUREHEAD by LEONIE ADAMS COLUMBUS [JANUARY, 1487] by LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY |
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