On Seeing a Child Blush on his first View of a Corpse

[ZaunköniG]

On Seeing a Child Blush on his first View of a Corpse

‘T is good our earliest sympathies to trace,
And I would muse upon a little thing, -
What brought the blush into that infant’s face,
When first confronted with the rueful King?

He boldly came: what made his courage less?
A signal for the heart to beat less free
Are all imperial presences; and he
Was awed by Death’s consummate kingliness,

And by the high and peerless front he bore.
No thought of dying armies crossed the lad;
He feared the stranger, though he knew no more;

Surmising and surprised, but most, afraid;
As Crusoe, wandering on the desert shore,
Saw but an alien footmark, and was sad!