Death of an Infant

By Lydia Huntley Sigourney 1791–1865

Death found strange beauty on that cherub brow,

And dash’d it out. – There was a tint of rose

O’er cheek and lip; – he touch’d the veins with ice,

And the rose faded. – Forth from those blue eyes

There spake a wistful tenderness, – a doubt

Whether to grieve or sleep, which Innocence

Alone can wear. – With ruthless haste he bound

The silken fringes of their curtaining lids

Forever. – There had been a murmuring sound

With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,

Charming her even to tears. – The spoiler set

His seal of silence. – But there beam’d a smile,

So fix’d and holy from that marble brow, –

Death gazed and left it there; – he dared not steal

The signet-ring of Heaven.

Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)

Biography

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, poet Lydia Huntley Sigourney—known as the “Sweet Singer of Hartford”—was the only daughter of a gardener. She attended private school with the assistance of her father’s employer, and founded a Hartford school for girls in 1814. At this school, without any specialized training, Sigourney taught a deaf student, Alice Cogswell, to read and write in English. Cogswell would later be the first student . . .

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