I know a maid beyond compare
For virtue sweet and beauty rare.
Her eyes are turquoise and her hair
Is sunlight netted.
She has her lovers, great and small,
The quiet student, wise and tall,
The child that hugs its battered doll,—
By them she’s petted.
Her heart seems ever warm and gay,
In smiles and kindly words, each day,
She scatters round her on life’s way
Love beyond measure.
The wild flowers, as she passes by,
Bloom sweeter for her being nigh;
The bird that mounts into the sky
Sings for her pleasure.
Her sorrows she is wont to hide,
Her joys she shares on every side;
She is her doting mother’s pride,
Her father’s jewel.
If we, who style this world so bad,
But strove, like her, to make it glad,
Life then would seem by far less sad,
Nor half so cruel.