An Old Doll

Low on her little stool she sits

   To make a nursing lap,

And cares for nothing but the form

   Her little arms enwrap.

With hairless skull that gapes apart,

   A broken plaster ball,

One chipped glass eye that squints askew,

   And ne'er a nose at all—

No raddle left on grimy cheek,

   No mouth that one can see—

It scarce discloses, at a glance,

   What it was meant to be.

But something in the simple scheme

   As it extends below

(It is the "tidy" from my chair

   That she is rumpling so)—

A certain folding of the stuff

   That winds the thing about

(But still permits the sawdust gore

   To trickle down and out)—

The way it curves around her waist,

   On little knees outspread—

Implies a body frail and dear,

   Whence one infers a head.

She rocks the scarecrow to and fro,

   With croonings soft and deep,

A lullaby designed to hush

   The bunch of rags to sleep.

I ask what rubbish has she there.

   "My dolly," she replies,

But tone and smile and gesture say,

   "My angel from the skies."

Ineffable the look of love

   Cast on the hideous blur

That somehow means a precious face,

   Most beautiful, to her.

The deftness and the tenderness

   Of her caressing hands . . . . . .

How can she possibly divine

   For what the creature stands?

Herself a nurseling, that has seen

   The summers and the snows

Of scarce five years of baby life.

   And yet she knows—she knows.

Just as a puppy of the pack

   Knows unheard huntsman's call,

And knows it is a running hound

   Before it learns to crawl.

Just as she knew, when hardly born,

   The breast unseen before,

And knew—how well!—before they touched,

   What milk and mouth were for.

So, by some mystic extra-sense

   Denied to eyes and ears,

Her spirit communes with its own

   Beyond the veil of years.

She hears unechoing footsteps run

   On floors she never trod,

Sees lineaments invisible

   As is the face of God—

Forms she can recognise and greet,

   Though wholly hid from me.

Alas! a treasure that is not,

   And that may never be.

The majesty of motherhood

   Sits on her baby brow;

Before her little three-legged throne

   My grizzled head must bow.

That dingy bundle in her arms

   Symbols immortal things—

A heritage, by right divine,

   Beyond the claims of kings.