Sometimes before bed, the kids and I pile up in my room and we watch YouTube videos to settle down. A few nights ago we came across a beautiful reading of this old poem. The lines were read slowly and deliberately, from a mother to her child.
I found comfort in the nearly-170-year-old words and I thought you might too. I know that they were originally written as a poem from one lover to another, but I find that shifting my perspective to that of parent and child helps give me some new words to describe the affection I have for my own kids: the two who cuddle up with me in my bed on a random school night and the two who will always be with us, but whom we cannot see.