The Changeling (Lowell)

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 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.

This 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.