Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume I. Of Home: of Friendship. 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.”] |
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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; | 5 |
| And she cried, “Dermot, darling! O come back to me!” | |
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| Her beads while she numbered | |
| The baby still slumbered, | |
| And smiled in her face as she bended her knee: | |
| “O, blessed be that warning, | 10 |
| My child, thy sleep adorning,— | |
| For I know that the angels are whispering with thee. | |
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| “And while they are keeping | |
| Bright watch o’er thy sleeping, | |
| O, pray to them softly, my baby, with me,— | 15 |
| And say thou wouldst rather | |
| They ’d watch o’er thy father! | |
| For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.” | |
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| The dawn of the morning | |
| Saw Dermot returning, | 20 |
| 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.” | | | |
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