That Children in their Loveliness Should Die by Arthur Hugh Clough

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural.  But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything, ― whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

From: Clough, Arthur Hugh, Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough with Memoir, 1900, Thomas Y Crowell & Company: New York, p. 289.
(http://archive.org/stream/arthurhughclough00clouiala#page/n7/mode/2up)

Date: 1900 (published)

By: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)

Tags: 1900, arthur hugh clough, poetry, that children in their loveliness should die