The Innocents

TO make perfect the heaven of mothers
The little children die,
For what care they for the praise of God
Who have sung a lullaby?

The arms that have ached with nursing
Would ache with their emptiness
Were there no little children
To fondle and caress.

And while the saints and angels
Sing loud in adoring throngs,
God hears the mothers and children
Singing their crooning songs.

Analysis (ai): The poem addresses maternal grief and divine consolation through child mortality, centering motherhood as a sacred, yet agonizing experience. Unlike McArthur’s typically rural or journalistic works, this piece diverges into spiritual speculation, framing death not as tragedy but as completion of emotional purpose.

Tone and Perspective: The tone is tender yet fatalistic, offering a theological justification for infant death. It assumes a collective maternal voice, rare in McArthur’s oeuvre, which often focuses on individual observation rather than communal sorrow.

Religious Framing: Unlike contemporary Victorian elegies that emphasize personal salvation or reunion in afterlife, the poem repositions heavenly hierarchy: maternal lullabies rival angelic hymns in God’s favor, suggesting domestic love holds spiritual primacy.

Place in Author’s Work: This poem stands out among McArthur’s lesser-known literary efforts, which lean toward pastoral humor or social commentary; its emotional directness and metaphysical concern contrast with his usual irony and regional focus.

Historical Context: Written during early 20th-century modernization, when public health reduced infant mortality, the poem reflects lingering cultural anxiety about child death, common in late-Victorian and Edwardian verse but increasingly outdated by the 1920s.

Form and Rhythm: The quatrains follow a simple ABCB pattern with gentle iambic meter, creating a lullaby-like cadence that mirrors the subject. This lyrical accessibility aligns with popular verse norms of the era, avoiding the dissonance or fragmentation seen in modernist contemporaries.

Alternative Reading: Rather than affirming faith, the poem may subtly question divine design by implying heaven requires suffering to be "perfected," suggesting a critique of religious consolation that depends on irreversible loss.

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Peter McArthur Follow

To D. A. Mackellar

[In Dedication of Aguilar]

MY cherished dead, when last your placid brow
I saw through tears and ne'er on earth again,
With trembling lips I made a holy vow
To show our love in a remembered strain,
In self-defeated discord of the streets
Where life had called us when our hearts were
strong,
Where friend a friend so true but seldom greets,
I heard a voice of unrecorded song.
With such poor means as are by nature mine
And faith that raised me from despairing gloom,
Today I come as to a sacred shrine
And lay this tribute on your lowly tomb,
And plead, if any question or admire
The living do but what the dead inspire.

Analysis (ai): The poem functions as a private vow transformed into public offering, centering filial or fraternal grief as motivation for poetic creation.

Formal Restraint: Written in Shakespearean sonnet structure with minimal variation, it adheres to early 20th-century conservative forms, contrasting with contemporaneous modernist fragmentation.

Tone and Diction: The elevated diction—"placid brow," "holy vow," "sacred shrine"—aligns with Edwardian elegiac conventions, favoring decorum over raw expression, typical of McArthur’s journalistic yet sentimental style.

Intertextual Silence: Unlike his more nature-focused or satirical poems, this dedication bypasses regional themes for introspective mourning, marking a shift from his usual engagement with rural Ontario life.

Voice and Anonymity: The "unrecorded song" suggests art emerging from obscurity, possibly reflecting McArthur’s own ambivalence about literary legacy, a tension absent in his more confident, public-facing essays.

Temporal Contrast: While modernist peers dismantled traditional forms to reflect psychological rupture, this poem reaffirms continuity between life, death, and duty, resisting the disillusionment common post-World War I.

Audience and Afterlife: The final couplet questions the validity of tribute, implying the dead—not posterity—authorize creation, a reversal of typical elegiac aims and a subtler claim for art’s origin in personal obligation.

Position in Oeuvre: Among McArthur’s lesser-known verses, this stands out for its emotional gravity and lack of didacticism, diverging from his customary blend of humor and moral clarity in periodical writing.

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Peter McArthur Follow

Heartsease

IN some strange way God understands
Her dreaming lips were fondly pressed,
The playful touch of childish hands
Her wan cheek lingeringly caressed.

With joy she woke, but to her heart
A grief of loss the waking gave;
She rose to live her lonely part—
A simple woman true and brave.

And all the day she softly sung
Low crooning airs that mothers sing,
For to her weary heart there clung
The peace that childish kisses bring.

Analysis (ai): The poem centers on maternal longing and grief, using tactile and auditory images—kisses, touch, song—to convey emotional residue. Dreams of lost children surface through physical sensations, suggesting memory as embodied experience. The titular "Heartsease" functions ironically, implying neither comfort nor resolution.

Tone and Voice: Quiet resignation defines the speaker’s tone; the restrained diction avoids melodrama. The mother’s endurance is portrayed not as heroism but as habitual solitude, marked by routine song and labor. Emotion is internalized, expressed through repetition of daily acts.

Form and Structure: Four quatrains with consistent ABAB rhyme and iambic meter reflect traditional 19th-century versification. The regular form contrasts with emotional disruption, framing sorrow within accepted structures, typical of early 20th-century transitional poetry resisting modernist fragmentation.

Context and Comparison: Unlike contemporaries experimenting with free verse or psychological depth post-1900, this poem adheres to sentimental domestic modes seen in McArthur’s rural sketches. It aligns with Edwardian ideals of stoic womanhood, differing from his usual journalistic prose but resonating with his interest in agrarian simplicity.

Less-Discussed Dimension: Rather than celebrating maternal love, the poem critiques the erasure of women’s grief through routine. Her singing, often interpreted as comfort, may instead be an involuntary repetition compulsion—soothing not her heart, but social expectations.

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Famous poet /1866 - 1924

Peter McArthur

The Innocents

To D. A. Mackellar

Heartsease

Famous poets