Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds
A faint and starry radiance, through the gloom
And the sweet stillness, down on fair young heads,
With all their clustering locks, untouch’d by care,
And bow’d, as flowers are bow’d with night, in prayer.
Gaze on—’tis lovely! Childhood’s lip and cheek,
Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!
Gaze—yet what seest thou in those fair, and meek,
And fragile things, as but for sunshine wrought?—
Thou seest what grief must nurture for the sky,