Hamnet

Upon the quiet fields of Stratford’s air,
A boy named Hamnet did his tender years
Spend ’neath the elm, where sunlight caught his hair,
And laughter rang like chimes in summer’s sphere.
Yet fever came, a shadow, stealthy, grim,
That stole his breath before he saw twelve springs;
The quill of Will, his father, dimmed and dim,
As ink ran cold while sorrow’s echoes sing.
In Stratford’s church the bell tolled low and slow,
A knell for hopes that never saw the stage;
The world lost bud before it learnt to grow,
Yet in his brief life love did softly gauge.
So Hamnet lives, though brief his mortal thread,
In verses breathed where love and loss are spread.