Birth and Death by Thomas Wade. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. 1895. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Birth and Death

Thomas Wade (1805–75)


METHINKS the soul within the body held
Is as a little babe within the womb,
Which flutters in its antenatal tomb,
But stirs and heaves the prison where ’t is cell’d,
And struggles in strange darkness, undispell’d	5
By all its strivings towards the breath and bloom
Of that aurorean being soon to come—
Strivings of feebleness, by nothing quell’d:
And even as birth to the enfranchis’d child,
Which shows to its sweet senses all the vast	10
Of beauty visible and audible,
Is death unto the spirit undefil’d;
Setting it free of limit, and the past,
And all that in its prison-house befell.