Hark, April again as a bird in the house with a child's voice
hither and thither:
See, May in the garden again with a child's face cheering the woods
ere they wither.
June laughs in the light of his eyes, and July on the sunbright
cheeks of him slumbers,
And August glows in a smile more sweet than the cadence of
gold-mouthed numbers.
In the morning the sight of him brightens the sun, and the noon
with delight in him flushes,
And the silence of nightfall is music about him as soft as the
sleep that it hushes.
We awake with a sense of a sunrise that is not a gift of the
sundawn's giving,
And a voice that salutes us is sweeter than all sounds else in the
world of the living,
And a presence that warms us is brighter than all in the world of
our visions beholden,
Though the dreams of our sleep were as those that the light of a
world without grief makes golden.
For the best that the best of us ever devised as a likeness of
heaven and its glory,
What was it of old, or what is it and will be for ever, in song or
in story,
Or in shape or in colour of carven or painted resemblance, adored
of all ages,
But a vision recorded of children alive in the pictures of old or
the pages?
Where children are not, heaven is not, and heaven if they come not
again shall be never:
But the face and the voice of a child are assurance of heaven and
its promise for ever.
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