The Perfect Day

God made a day of blue and gold,
Sweet as a violet,
As merry as a marigold;
It may be shining yet
In some blest vale, some dreamy dell
Among the heavenly hills,
Where here and there the asphodel
Is flecked by daffodils
And gentians, flowers that twinkled on
The fields our childhood knew,
Too lovely for oblivion,
Fed with immortal dew.

That summer day, all murmurous
With laughters of old mirth,
How tenderly 'twould comfort us,
Still homesick for the earth;
With what dear touch 'twould fold us in,
As to a mother's knee,
From those strange spaces crystalline
Of vast eternity,
— A day God saw with smiling eyes,
The summer's coronet!
In His far cycles of surprise
It may be shining yet.