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ON A
DEAD CHILD by Richard
Barham Middleton
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Man
proposes, God in His time
disposes,
And so I wander'd up to
where you lay,
A little rose among the
little roses,
And no more dead than
they.
It seemed your childish
feet were tired of straying,
You did not greet me from
your flower-strewn bed,
Yet still I knew that
you were only playing
--
Playing at being dead.
I might have thought that
you were really sleeping,
So quiet lay your eyelids
to the sky,
So still your hair, but
surely you were peeping;
And so I did not cry.
God knows, and in His
proper time disposes,
And so I smiled and gently
called your name,
Added my rose to your
sweet heap of roses,
And left you to your game.
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Richard
Barham Middleton
was born on the
28th of October,
1882, in Middlesex,
England.
During his short
life, he earned
a lasting place
in the treasury
of the worlds literature
as an outstanding
poet and writer
of ghost stories,
such as The Ghost
Ship, On the Brighton
Road and The Wrong
Turning.
Following his education
he found employment
as a bank clerk,
a career path that
ill-suited his bohemian
inclinations. Away
from the unhappy,
stifling atmosphere
of his work, he
devoted himself
to writing, and
associated with
other writers, artists
and eccentrics.
He was fond of inventing
fantasies, and once
playfully claimed
to have been descended
from a rogue pirate.
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He wrote, "I
have an ancestor,
so runs the
dearest of my
family traditions,
who was hanged
as a pirate
at Port Royal.
How much of
that priceless
piratical blood
the centuries
may have transmitted
to me, I do
not know..."
Middleton took
his own life
at the age of
29. His work
was published
posthumously
in the next
year. Before
his suicide,
he wrote the
following farewell
to friends and
family:
"... I'm
going adventuring
again, and thanks
to you I shall
have some pleasant
memories in
my knapsack.
As for the many
bitter ones,
perhaps they
will not weigh
so heavy now
as they did
before. 'A broken
and a contrite
heart, oh Lord,
thou shalt not
despise'"
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