[Editor: This poem by Menie Parkes was published in Poems (1867). It is a somewhat sad composition about the love between a dying baby and the Angel of Death.]
Our Darling’s Lover
Death fell in love with our darling fair,
With bright blue eyes and shining hair,
And pulpy lips of unkissed bloom,
And brows made stern with young thought’s gloom.
He lifted the veil from his sacred face,
He showed her his form of matchless grace ;
And our darling told us, with fluttering breath,
She had plighted her troth to the Angel Death
Her hair grew lank from his damp caress,
And her brow was cold where his lips did press ;
And the child of our hearts was lost, we knew,
For Death is a lover, fond, firm and true.
Her voice was clear and toned with glee,
And her eyes were bright and her step was free ;
Her pearly cheek he painted with light,
She bloomed to an angel before our sight.
There came to us soon the parting day,
And our darling went with a smile away ;
With a beaming smile and a panting breath,
She sprang to the arms of her lover, Death.
But the grief was ours who were left behind,
With our tearful eyes all bleared and blind ;
And still the sighs catch our baffled breath
For our darling, loved by the Angel — Death.
Source:
Menie Parkes, Poems, F. Cunninghame, Sydney, [1867], pp. 17-18
Also published in:
Susan Lever (editor), The Oxford Book of Australian Women’s Verse, South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 8
Editor’s notes:
plight = pledge, promise
troth = a pledge of faithfulness or loyalty, especially for a betrothal (a promise of marriage); a promise
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