The Perfect Day

OD made a day of blue and gold,

Sweet as a violet,

As merry as a marigold;

It may be shining

In some blest vale, some dreamy

Among the heavenly hills,

Where here and there the

Is flecked by

And gentians, flowers that twinkled

The fields our childhood knew,

Too lovely for oblivion,

Fed with immortal dew.

That summer day, all

With laughters of old mirth,

How tenderly 'twould comfort us,

Still homesick for the earth;

With what dear touch 'twould fold us in,

As to a mother's knee,

From those strange spaces

Of vast eternity,— A day God saw with smiling eyes,

The summer's coronet!

In His far cycles of

It may be shining yet.