Eight summers ago, at the door of my heart,
By the angel of Love was our little one laid,
That we, who of earth have the indigent's part,
By the largess of Heaven should be sweetly repaid.
Eight summers have centered their music and bloom,
In the hue of her cheek and the ring of her laugh;
Their warm-flowing sunlight, and meadows perfume,
Seemed twined with her soul in its gentle behalf.
Their mornings are melted in cheek, lip and palm,
Their noons in the warm, mellow hush of her love,
Their star-glowing nights in her ores' ebon calm,
Still and dark with the depth of the clear soul above.
She sits by my side with a book on her knee,
And her face with unmoving delight glowing full;
Till a word from my lip sends it leaping in glee,
As wind ripples flash o'er the glass of a pool.
Her mien is subdued to a womanly grace,
When her own quiet thoughts are away in their heaven;
But she leaps like a lamb in its frolicsome chase,
When a gentle caress, or a bounty, is given.
Away in the fields, when aroma and tone
Of flower and of bird, are the breath and the song
Of Dryads unseen, she will wander alone,
And talk with the rills as they ripple along;
Confide in the daisies her fanciful tales,
Kiss the buds of the rose, with her baby-like palm
Bent softly to stay them, or sing in the vales,
Now blithe as a lark, now serene as a psalm.
O, the laugh of her lip is the liquidest light
That melts through the partings of roseate clouds;
But the laugh of her eye is the dark of the night,
All twinkling with stars in their constellate crowds.
Yet I think there is nothing so deep in the sky,
So still in the bush of the clouds of the west,
As the soul of our girl, looking out from her eye,
And curving that lip in its beautiful rest.
The music and glory of summer and spring,
Never moulded the lines of that delicate soul;
Nor odors, though flung from a Seraph's quick wing,
Gave the sweetness which clings like a mist to the whole.
But the breath of our God, in an hour when his eye
Beamed a loving "Well done" on an angel of earth,
In entireness of life rippling over the sky,
Fann’d her spirit at once into beauty and birth.
O, deep as my joy is the prevalent awe
That rests on my heart, as my praises I lift
To the Life of our lives, from whose bounty I draw
The boon of this fearful and beautiful gift.
Carrie