My Babes in the Wood

I know a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder,
Than any story painted in your books.
You are so glad? It will not make you gladder;
Yet listen, with your pretty restless looks.

"Is it a Fairy Story?" Well, half fairy--
At least it dates far back as fairies do,
And seems to me as beautiful and airy;
Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true.

You had a baby sister and a brother,
(Two very dainty people, rosily white,
Each sweeter than all things except the other!)
Older yet younger--gone from human sight!

And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever,
And think with yearning tears how each light hand
Crept toward bright bloom or berries--I shall never
Know how I lost them. Do you understand?

Poor slightly golden heads! I think I missed them
First, in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way;
But when and where with lingering lips I kissed them,
My gradual parting, I can never say.

Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished
In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss,
Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherished,
For their small sakes, since my most lovely loss.

I fancy, too, that they were softly covered
By robins, out of apple-flowers they knew,
Whose nursing wings in far home sunshine hovered,
Before the timid world had dropped the dew.

Their names were--what yours are! At this you wonder.
Their pictures are--your own, as you have seen;
And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under
Lost leaves--why, it is your dead selves I mean!