Blessèd Babe! How Glorious:
Spotless Fair, Divinely Bright!²
Oft before their Infant Eyes will run
Such Forms as Glitter in the Muse’s Ray³
The Baby sleeping – lies in Milky Dreams⁴
Babies Help us: they Laugh for No Reason⁵
Where there is a Baby – things are Right enough⁶
The Baby’s Smile at the Flower is the Beauty
Of the Flower – the Beauty of the World⁷
Already New-Born Children interpret
Love in the Voices of their Mothers⁸
Our Babe shews his Godhead true⁹
Happy those Early Days – when
We Shine in our Angel-Infancy¹⁰
¹ Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon
² Isaac Watts, A Cradle Hymn
³ Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy
⁴ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Casa Guidi Windows
⁵ Naomi Shihab Nye, My Wisdom
⁶ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁷ Ursula K. Le Guin, Old Music and the Slave Women
⁸ Wallace Stevens, In the Carolinas
⁹ John Milton, Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
¹⁰ Henry Vaughan, The Retreat