When you were born, beloved, was your soul 
New made by God to match your body's flower, 
And were they both at one same precious hour 
Sent forth from heaven as a perfect whole? 
Or had your soul since dim creation burned, 
A star in some still region of the sky, 
That leaping earthward, left its place on high 
And to your little new-born body yearned? 
No words can tell in what celestial hour 
God made your soul and gave it mortal birth, 
Nor in the disarray of all the stars 
Is any place so sweet that such a flower 
Might linger there until thro' heaven's bars, 
It heard God's voice that bade it down to earth.