The Soul's Pregnancy

If all be irrecoverably lost.
Why linger here to watch the dull days out,
To greet the meaningless spring, or hear the shout
Of winds and waves upon some stormy coast,
To wither in the winter's deadly frost.
To think on Death, to speculate, to doubt,
To move in funeral train, or festive rout,
'Mid living presences a very ghost?

'T is that the pain-wed soul is conscious of
Some in-wombed child of spiritual good
The heart, before the end, would recognize, —
So some young widow, feeding with her blood
Her own and her dead husband's fruit of love.
But lives that she may see her baby's eyes.