Francis Burdett Money-Coutts (1852–1923)

NO wonder you so oft have wept;

For I was born unblest:

Yet wounded creature never crept

To you but found a rest;

To you the patient hound’s mild eyes

Are turn’d in perfect trust,

And into yours, with sure surmise,

The baby’s hand is thrust;

The little birds make you their friend,

The flowers in your sweet hand

Arrange themselves, and graceful bend,

As if they understand.

And when these die,—the household pet,—

The babe (though not your own),—

Yes, or the very flowers,—you fret

To fly where they have flown.

FORGIVE!

And tell me that sweet tale,

How you and I one day may live

In some diviner vale.

In some diviner vale, dear child,

Than this in which we lie

And watch the monstrous mountains piled

And clouded into sky.

Yet even there, far out of reach

Are peaks we cannot scale,

For God has something still to teach

In that diviner vale.