| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | X. The Pity of It
On a Dead Child | | By Richard Middleton (1882–1911) |
| | | MAN proposes, God in His time disposes, | |
| And so I wander’d up to where you lay, | |
| A little rose among the little roses, | |
| And no more dead than they. | |
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| It seem’d your childish feet were tired of straying, | 5 |
| You did not greet me from your flower-strewn bed, | |
| Yet still I knew that you were only playing— | |
| Playing at being dead. | |
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| I might have thought that you were really sleeping, | |
| So quiet lay your eyelids to the sky, | 10 |
| So still your hair, but surely you were peeping, | |
| And so I did not cry. | |
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| God knows, and in His proper time disposes, | |
| And so I smiled and gently called your name, | |
| Added my rose to your sweet heap of roses, | 15 |
| And left you to your game. | | | | |
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