The Child Dying

Unfriendly friendly universe,

I pack your stars into my purse,

And bid you so farewell.

That I can leave you, quite go out,

Go out, go out beyond all doubt,

My father says, is the miracle.

You are so great, and I so small:

I am nothing, you are all:

Being nothing, I can take this way.

Oh I need neither rise nor fall,

For when I do not move at all

I shall be out of all your day.

It's said some memory will remain

In the other place, grass in the rain,

Light on the land, sun on the sea,

A flitting grace, a phantom face,

But the world is out. There is not place

Where it and its ghost can ever be.

Father, father, I dread this air

Blown from the far side of despair

The cold cold corner. What house, what hold,

What hand is there? I look and see

Nothing-filled eternity,

And the great round world grows weak and old.

Hold my hand, oh hold it fast-

I am changing! - until at last

My hand in yours no more will change,

Though yours change on. You here, I there,

So hand in hand, twin-leafed despair -

I did not know death was so strange.