Poetry Friday - The Toys

I've had trouble deciding on a poem for today. There just wasn't that one poem that I felt particularly inclined to post, and I have had books open all over the place. I looked at more T.S. Eliot, but he is long and obscure, then considered one by Elizabeth Prentiss, but she wrote it in the depths of her own agony, and in isolation of her own story or your own agony it might be too wrenching. So in the end I have chosen one by Coventry Patmore, which you'll need no great perspicacity to understand.

The Toys

MY little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise

Having my law the seventh time disobey'd

I struck him, and dismiss'd

With hard words and unkiss'd

—His Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach,

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells,

And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray'd

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

'I will be sorry for their childishness.'

Coventry Patmore 1823–1896