Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Innocencies (1905). I. The Dead Child

Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1861–1931)

THE LITTLE son was dead

Ere he was born, alas!

Never upon his hapless head

The saving water was.

In Crios-na-Lanna drear

They laid the precious clay

That will not rise in any year

Nor on the Judgment Day.

As she went to and fro,

Her tears fell down like rain

For the small son she might not know,

Whom she had borne in pain.

As she went out about,

Her tears they burned like fire

For the small wandering soul cast out

That was our Lord’s desire.

As she went to the well,

Past Crios-na-Lanna dark,

She heard the sheep and the sheep-bell

And many a happy lark.

O’er churchyard grave and moss

The sheep cropped, well content;

The little grave without a cross

Cried to her as she went.

She never raised her eyes,

But drew the water clear.

Is that a new-born babe that cries,

Or straying lambkin near?

O is it lamb or child

That leaves the churchyard sod?

A little lamb all undefiled

And like the Lamb of God;

That seeks its mother mild

With tender soft alarms;

O is it lamb or is it child

That bleats within her arms?

O is it child or lamb

That pushes at her breast?

A lamb that sought its straying dam

And has come home to rest.

On Crios-na-Lanna’s rock

The sheep browse safe from harms:

One little lamb has left the flock

And leaped into her arms.

By Crios-na-Lanna lone

At morning-tide and even,

The hungry heart has found its own,

The mother is in heaven.