[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
The Idiot
Sad are the eyes of her who sits apart
With her dead babe; but sadder still is she
Who lays her idiot child upon her knee;
Its every pulsebeat crucifies the heart
That loves, but prays: “Perfection as Thou art
Take what the tides have made deformity,
And flung a wreck from the abysmal sea —
A whisp of flotsam and without a chart.”
“I dare not let the instinct of my love
Cling to the woeful gift: Thine was the fault
That brought him where the darker waters move
And did not wash him in the wholesome salt
That for the tug with Time makes mortals fit —
Ere I shall love too much, his web unknit.”
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 31
Editor’s notes:
ere = (archaic) before (from the Middle English “er”, itself from the Old English “aer”, meaning early or soon)
flotsam = material or goods floating on the water or washed up on shore, especially the wreckage or cargo of a ship (often used in the phrase “flotsam and jetsam”, jetsam referring to material or cargo jettisoned, cast from, a ship, so as to lighten a load or stabilize the vessel); odds and ends; items, or people, cast aside or rejected, due to being considered useless, unimportant, or worthless; vagrants
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