Lament IV

Thou hast constrained mine eyes, unholy Death, To watch my dear child breathe her dying breath: To watch thee shake the fruit unripe and clinging While fear and grief her parents' hearts were wringing. Ah, never, never could my well-loved child Have died and left her father reconciled: Never but with a heart like heavy lead Could I have watched her go, abandoned. And yet at no time could her death have brought More cruel ache than now, nor bitterer thought; For had God granted to her ample days I might have walked with her down flowered ways And left this life at last, content, descending To realms of dark Persephone, the all-ending, Without such grievous sorrow in my heart, Of which earth holdeth not the counterpart. I marvel not that Niobe, alone Amid her dear, dead children, turned to stone.