Clara

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 past,
    By the largess of Heaven should be sweetly repaid!

Eight summers have centered their music & bloom
    In the hue of her cheek, & the ring of her laugh,
Their warm-flowing sunlight & meadow’s perfume,
    Seem twined with her soul in its gentle behalf

Their mornings are welted in cheek lip & palm,
    Their noons in the warm, mellow hush of her love,
Their star-glowing nights in her eye’s echo calm,
    Still & dark with the depth of the clear soul above.

She sits by my side with a book on her knee,
    And her face of unmoving delight glowing full,
Till a word from my lip sends it leaping in glee,
    As wind-ripples flash oer the glass of a pool.

Her mein is subdued to a womanly grace
    When her own quiet thoughts are away in their heaven,
But the leaps like a lamb in its frolic seem chase,
    When a gentle caress, as a bounty, is given.

Away in the fields, when aroma & tone
    Of flower & of bird, are the breath & 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 palms
Bent softly to stay them, or sing in the vales
    Now blithe as the lark, now serene as a palm.

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 atwinkle with stars in their constellate crowds!

Yet I think there is nothing so deep in the sky,
    So still in the hush 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 & glory of summer & spring,
    Never moulded the lines of that delicate soul,
Nor odors, though flung from a Seraph’s white wing,
    Gave the sweetness which clings like a mist to the whole.

But the wealth of our God, in an hour when this eye
    Beamed a loving “Well done” on an angel of earth,
In entireness of life rippling over the sky,
    Fanned her spirit at once into beauty & birth.

O, deep as my joy is the prevalent awe
    That rests on my heart, as my praises of lift
To the Life of our lives, from whose bounty I draw
    The boon of this fearful & beautiful gift!