Soft and gentle little darling
Are you going then so soon?
It is hard that thou should’st leave us
Seeing it is only noon.
Surely as the reaper passeth
He might leave this little flower;
Seek a rose more fully blown
From some other less prized bower.
Thou has’t had so little sunshine,
Life has seemed a cloud so dark,
As if on a sea all stormy
Fate had launched thy little bark.
‘Tis so hard to part my darling,
And yet perhaps ‘tis better so,
There you will be ever happy
None can say so here below.
Or is it that we long
For what God thinks is wrong?
So on earth he stays our song
Heaven’s to make brighter.
