Oh! say not, dream not, heavenly notes

To childish ears are vain,

That the young mind at random floats,

And cannot reach the strain.

Dim or unheard, the words may fall,

And yet the heaven-taught mind

May learn the sacred air, and all

The harmony unwind.

Was not our Lord a little child,

Taught by degrees to pray,

By father dear and mother mild

Instructed day by day?

And lov’d He not of Heaven to talk

With children in His sight,

To meet them in His daily walk,

And to His arms invite?

What though around His throne of fire

The everlasting chant

Be wafted from the seraph choir

In glory jubilant?

Yet stoops He, ever pleas’d to mark

Our rude essays of love,

Faint as the pipe of wakening lark,

Heard by some twilight grove:

Yet is He near us, to survey

These bright and order’d files,

Like spring-flowers in their best array,

All silence and all smiles.

Save that each little voice in turn

Some glorious truth proclaims,

What sages would have died to learn,

Now taught by cottage dames.

And if some tones be false or low,

What are all prayers beneath

But cries of babes, that cannot know

Half the deep thought they breathe?

In His own words we Christ adore,

But angels, as we speak,

Higher above our meaning soar

Than we o’er children weak:

And yet His words mean more than they,

And yet He owns their praise:

Why should we think, He turns away

From infants’ simple lays?