CHARLES LAMB

Limbs so fair, they might supply

(Themselves now but cold imagery)

The sculptor to make Beauty by.

Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry

That babe or mother, one must die;

So in mercy left the stock

And cut the branch ; to save the shock

Of young years widow'd, and the pain

When single state comes back again

To the lone man who, reft of wife,

Thenceforward drags a maimed life ?

The economy of Heaven is dark,

And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark,

Why human buds, like this, should fall,

More brief than fly ephemeral

That has his day ; while shrivell'd crones

Stiffen with age to stocks and stones ;

And crabbed use the conscience sears

In sinners of an hundred years.

Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes ; Coral redder than those lips Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infants' glee, Whistle never tuned for thee ; Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, Loving hearts were they which gave them. Let not one be missing ; nurse, See them laid upon the hearse Of infant slain by doom perverse. Why should kings and nobles have

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