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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  The Angel’s Whisper

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Home: I. About Children

The Angel’s Whisper

Samuel Lover (1797–1868)

  • [In Ireland they have a pretty fancy that when a child smiles in its sleep it is “talking with angels.”]


  • A BABY was sleeping;

    Its mother was weeping;

    For her husband was far on the wild raging sea;

    And the tempest was swelling

    Round the fisherman’s dwelling;

    And she cried, “Dermot, darling! O come back to me!”

    Her beads while she numbered

    The baby still slumbered,

    And smiled in her face as she bended her knee:

    “O, blessed be that warning,

    My child, thy sleep adorning,—

    For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.

    “And while they are keeping

    Bright watch o’er thy sleeping,

    O, pray to them softly, my baby, with me,—

    And say thou wouldst rather

    They ’d watch o’er thy father!

    For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.”

    The dawn of the morning

    Saw Dermot returning,

    And the wife wept with joy her babe’s father to see;

    And closely caressing

    Her child with a blessing,

    Said, “I knew that the angels were whispering with thee.”