Child’s Questions, A

Was he ever a Baby, Mother,
    That reeling & tattered man;
With dead eyes out of a purple face
    Looking only as dead eyes can?

Did a mother’s kiss ever fall on
    That frightful & grimacing mouth?
Did it ever prattle, & say sweet things,
    Like a Brook in the summer’s drouth?

Did he lift his small band, praying
    The Lord his soul to keep,
Who now goes muttering dreadful words,
    As he rolls in the ditch to his deep?

O, Mother, the cup of the drunkard
    My lip shall never kiss,
Where all that was sweetest in body & soul
    Is changed to a thing like this!

What frightful creature has made him
    From a baby pretty & pure,
To such a terrible, sickening thing
    No mother could kiss to cure!

I think of the cruel Herod
    And the darling babes he hew;
But were it not kinder to kill them so, 
    Than to make them wicked too?