Poems (Dorr)/"God Knows"

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"GOD KNOWS"
Wild and dark was the winter night When the emigrant ship went down,But just outside of the harbor bar, In the sight of the startled town.The winds howled, and the sea roared, And never a soul could sleep,Save the little ones on their mothers' breasts, Too young to watch and weep.
No boat could live in the angry surf, No rope could reach the land:There were bold, brave hearts upon the shore, There was many a ready hand—Women who prayed, and men who strove When prayers and work were vain;For the sun rose over the awful void And the silence of the main.
All day the watchers paced the sands, All day they scanned the deep,All night the booming minute-guns Echoed from steep to steep."Give up thy dead, O cruel sea!" They cried athwart the space;But only an infant's fragile form Escaped from its stern embrace.
Only one little child of all Who with the ship went down ​That night when the happy babies slept So warm in the sheltered town.Wrapped in the glow of the morning light, It lay on the shifting sand,As fair as a sculptor's marble dream, With a shell in its dimpled hand.
There were none to tell of its race or kin. "God knoweth," the pastor said,When the wondering children asked of him The name of the baby dead.And so, when they laid it away at last In the church-yard's hushed repose,They raised a stone at the baby's head, With the carven words, "God knows."
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