Lines on the death of three small children of W. & P. Woodruff—
Written by her request
Mourn not for them,
their bodies rest
So sweetly in the
ground—
And they’ll awake to
life again
At the first trumpet's
sound.
Mourn not for them
for they are now
Associated where
The purest pleasures
heav’n can boast
They’re privileg’d to
share.
Mourn not for them—they’re
not as when
Caress’d upon your
knee;
They now are noble
spirits, and
Disrob’d of infancy.
Mourn not for them:
the helpless state
Which they submitted
to
Was for the body’s
sake but more
To prove their love
for you.
Mourn not for them:
they laid aside
Their dignity to come
And visit you &
stay on earth
Until they were call’d
home.
Mourn not for them:
they will return
With grace &
honor crown’d
To bless your household
& to spread
Intelligence around. entry
for February 11, 1847, in Eliza R. Snow, Trial Diary, February 1846-May 1847, in
Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, ed., The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow
[Life Writings of Frontier Women Volume 5; Logan, Utah: Utah State University
Press, 2000], 152)
For the background of this poem, we read
the following from Beecher:
Ezra Woodruff, Phebe
and Wilford Woodruff’s baby had died the bday before, two days following his
premature birth. Their sixteen-month-old son Joseph had died of pneumonia two
months earlier on 12 November. Sarah Emma, the Woodruff’s first child, had died
in July 1840 at age two. (Ibid., 284 n. 72)
