Come hither child who gifted thee

Come hither child who gifted thee

With power to touch that string so well

How dare you wake thoughts in me

Thoughts that I would but cannot quell?

But thus it was - one festal night

When I was hardly six years old

I stole away from crowds and light

and sought a chamber dark and cold

I had no one to love me there

I knew no comrade and no friend

And so I went to sorrow where

Heaven only heaven saw me wend

Loud blew the wind twas sad to stay

From all that splendour barred away

I imaged in the lonely room

A thousand forms of fearful gloom

And with my wet eye raised on high

I prayed to God that I might die

Suddenly in that silence drear

A sound of music reached my ear

And then a note I hear it yet

So full of soul so deeply sweet

I thought that Gabriel's self had come

To take me to my fathers home

Three times it rose that seraph strain

Then died nor lived ever again

But still the words and still the tone

Swell round my heart when all alone