Posted by Daddy on Apr 26, 2011 at 11:15 pm

“Oh, say not that your little son is dead;
The word too harsh and much too hopeless seems,
Believe, instead,
That he has left his little trundle bed
To climb the hills
Of morning, and to share the joy that fills
God’s pleasant land of dreams.

“Nay, say not that your little son is dead.
It is not right, because it is not true.
Believe, instead,
He has but gone the way that you must tread,
And, smiling, waits
In loving ambush by those pearly gates,
To laugh and leap at you.

“No knight that does you service can be dead;
Nor idle is this young knight gone before.
Believe, instead,
Upon an envoy’s mission he hath sped
That doth import
Your greatest good; for he at heaven’s court
Is your ambassador.”

— T. A. Daly —

Posted by Daddy on at 11:14 pm

Amid all the whirl and dizziness of life’s tragedy, in which creation seems to be but one great cloud, I find myself suddenly brought to a sweet baby’s grave. A gray old church, a gurgling stream, a far-spreading thorn tree on a green hillock, and a grave on the sunny southerly side. That is it. Thither I hasten night and day, and in patting the soft grass I feel as if conveying some sense of love to the little sleeper far down. Do not reason with me about it; let the wild heart, in its sweet delirium of love, have all its own way.

Baby was but two years old when, like a dewdrop, he went up to the warm sun, yet he left my heart as I have seen ground left out of which a storm had torn a great tree. We talk about the influence of great thinkers, great speakers, and great writers; but what about the little infant’s power? Oh, child of my heart, no poet has been so poetical, no soldier so victorious, no benefactor so kind, as thy tiny, unconscious self. I feel thy soft kiss on my withered lips Just now, and would give all I have for one look of thy dreamy eyes. But I cannot have it.

Yet God is love. Not dark doubt, not staggering argument, not subtle sophism, but child-death, especially where there is but one, makes me wonder and makes me cry in pain. Baby! baby! I could begin the world again without a loaf or a friend if I had but thee; such a beginning, with all its hardships, would be welcome misery. I do not wonder that the grass is green and soft that covers that little grave, and that the summer birds sing their tenderest notes as they sit on the branches of that old hawthorn tree.

My God! Father of mine, in the blue heavens, is not this the heaviest cross that can crush the weakness of man? Yet that green grave, not three feet long, is to me a great estate, making me rich, with wealth untold. I can pray there. There I meet the infant angels; there I see all the mothers whose spirits are above; and there my heart says strange things in strange words — Baby, I am coming, coming soon! Do you know me? Do you see me? Do you look from sunny places down to this cold land of weariness? Oh, baby, sweet, sweet baby, I will try for your sake to be a better man; I will be kind to other little babies, and tell them your name, and sometimes let them play with your toys; but, oh, baby, baby, my old heart sobs and breaks.

— Dr. Joseph H. Parker —