Helen of Troy And Other Poems (39)

    When you were born, beloved, was your soul New made by God to match your body's flower, And were they both at one same precious hour Sent forth from heaven as a perfect whole？ Or had your soul since dim creation burned, A star in some still region of the sky, That leaping earthward, left its place on high And to your little new-born body yearned？ No words can tell in what celestial hour God made your soul and gave it mortal birth, Nor in the disarray of all the stars Is any place so sweet that such a flower Might linger there until thro' heaven's bars, It heard God's voice that bade it down to earth.