| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Laus Infantium |
| | | William Canton (b. 1845) |
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| IN praise of little children I will say | |
| God first made man, then found a better way | |
| For woman, but his third way was the best. | |
| Of all created things, the loveliest | |
| And most divine are children. Nothing here | 5 |
| Can be to us more gracious or more dear. | |
| And though, when God saw all his works were good, | |
| There was no rosy flower of babyhood, | |
| ’T was said of children in a later day | |
| That none could enter Heaven save such as they. | 10 |
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| The earth, which feels the flowering of a thorn, | |
| Was glad, O little child, when you were born; | |
| The earth, which thrills when skylarks scale the blue, | |
| Soared up itself to God’s own Heaven in you; | |
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| And Heaven, which loves to lean down and to glass | 15 |
| Its beauty in each dewdrop on the grass,— | |
| Heaven laughed to find your face so pure and fair, | |
| And left, O little child, its reflex there. | |
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