Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (16 page)

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Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

BOOK: Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century
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Page 40
2
Strategies of Consolation: The Dead Child in Poetry
CHILD DEATHS
, then, were common enough in the nineteenth century and were brooded on; so it is hardly surprising that they figure so prominently in nineteenth century literature. (Whether we should nonetheless be surprised will be discussed in chapter 4.) In this chapter I shall look at some of the many poems on the subject.
All deaths bring to the survivors a need for consolation, and child deaths most of all because of the feeling that it is unnatural as well as distressing for the mother to outlive her child. Consolation is at least the apparent theme of poems on the subject; so imagine yourself a bereaved mother reading the following poem by Felicia Hemans:
No bitter tears for thee be shed,
Blossom of being! seen and gone!
With flowers alone we strew thy bed,
O blest departed One!
Whose all of life, a rosy ray,
Blushed into dawn and passed away.
Yes! thou art fled, ere guilt had power
To stain the cherub-soul and form,
Closed is the soft ephemeral flower
 
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That never felt a storm!
The sunbeam's smile, the zephyr's breath,
All that it knew from birth to death.
Thou wert so like a form of light,
That Heaven benignly called thee hence,
Ere yet the world could breathe one blight
O'er thy sweet innocence:
And thou, that brighter home to bless,
Art passed, with all thy loveliness!
Oh! hadst thou still on earth remained,
Vision of beauty! fair as brief!
How soon thy brightness had been stained
With passion or with grief!
Now not a sullying breath can rise
To dim thy glory in the skies.
We rear no marble o'er thy tomb;
No sculptured image there shall mourn;
Ah! fitter far the vernal bloom
Such dwelling to adorn.
Fragrance, and flowers, and dews must be
The only emblems meet for thee.
Thy grave shall be a blessed shrine,
Adorned with Nature's brightest wreath;
Each glowing season shall combine
Its incense there to breathe;
And oft upon the midnight air,
Shall viewless harps be murmuring there.

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