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 forth¹ 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 yearned²？ No words can tell in what celestial³ hour God made your soul and gave it mortal birth, Nor in the disarray⁴ 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.