I had a little daughter,
       And she was given to me 
     To lead me gently backward 
       To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
     That I, by the force of nature, 
       Might in some dim wise divine 
     The depth of his infinite patience 
       To this wayward soul of mine. 

     I know not how others saw her, 
       But to me she was wholly fair, 
     And the light of the heaven she came from 
       Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; 
     For it was as wavy and golden, 
       And as many changes took, 
     As the shadows of the sun-gilt ripples 
       On the yellow bed of a brook. 

     To what can I liken her smiling 
       Upon me, her kneeling lover, 
     How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, 
       And dimpled her wholly over, 
     Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 
       And I almost seemed to see 
     The very heart of her mother 
       Sending sun through her veins to me! 

     She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 
       And it hardly seemed a day, 
     When a troop of wandering angels 
       Stole my little daughter away; 
     Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 
       But loosed the hampering strings, 
     And when they had opened her cage-door, 
       My little bird used her wings. 

     But they left in her stead a changeling, 
       A little angel child, 
     That seems like her bud in full blossom, 
       And smiles as she never smiled: 
     When I wake in the morning, I see it 
       Where she always used to lie, 
     And I feel as weak as a violet 
       Alone 'neath the awful sky. 

     As weak, yet as trustful also; 
       For the whole year long I see 
     All the wonders of faithful Nature 
       Still worked for the love of me; 
     Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, 
       Rain falls, suns rise and set, 
     Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 
       A poor little violet. 

     The child is not mine as the first was, 
       I cannot sing it to rest, 
     I cannot lift it up fatherly 
       And bliss it upon my breast; 
     Yet it lies in my little one's cradle 
       And sits in my little one's chair, 
     And the light of the heaven she's gone to 
       Transfigures its golden hair.

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