Unfriendly friendly universe, <br />I pack your stars into my purse, <br />And bid you so farewell. <br />That I can leave you, quite go out, <br />Go out, go out beyond all doubt, <br />My father says, is the miracle. <br /> <br />You are so great, and I so small: <br />I am nothing, you are all: <br />Being nothing, I can take this way. <br />Oh I need neither rise nor fall, <br />For when I do not move at all <br />I shall be out of all your day. <br /> <br />It's said some memory will remain <br />In the other place, grass in the rain, <br />Light on the land, sun on the sea, <br />A flitting grace, a phantom face, <br />But the world is out. There is not place <br />Where it and its ghost can ever be. <br /> <br />Father, father, I dread this air <br />Blown from the far side of despair <br />The cold cold corner. What house, what hold, <br />What hand is there? I look and see <br />Nothing-filled eternity, <br />And the great round world grows weak and old. <br /> <br />Hold my hand, oh hold it fast- <br />I am changing! - until at last <br />My hand in yours no more will change, <br />Though yours change on. You here, I there, <br />So hand in hand, twin-leafed despair - <br />I did not know death was so strange.<br /><br />Edwin Muir<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-child-dying/
