‘I have no name;I am but two days old.’What shall I call thee?‘I happy am,Joy is my name.’Sweet joy befall thee!Pretty joy!Sweet joy, but two days old.Sweet joy I call thee:Thou dost smile,I sing the while;Sweet joy befall thee!
Christening & naming day
Christening & naming day readings
Readings for a christening, a baptism, a naming day or a welcome party, chosen to be read aloud by a godparent or a grandparent. William Blake's Infant Joy is about a baby two days old being given a name; Gibran's lines on children suit a non-religious ceremony; Tagore and George MacDonald wonder where babies come from. There are also short lines for the card, from Peter Pan and Robert Louis Stevenson. All public domain and copied word for word from the original book, so they can be printed in an order of service.
Where did you come from, baby dear?Out of the everywhere into here.
George MacDonaldAt the Back of the North Wind, 1871 · Chapter XXXIII: The Prospect Brightens
Read the full text
Read the full text
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:
You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then. You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you. In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived. In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.
The sleep that flits on baby's eyes—does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glow-worms, there hang two shy buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby's eyes. The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps—does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning—the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
Sweet dreams, form a shadeO’er my lovely infant’s head!Sweet dreams of pleasant streamsBy happy, silent, moony beams!Sweet Sleep, with soft downWeave thy brows an infant crown!Sweet Sleep, angel mild,Hover o’er my happy child!Sweet smiles, in the nightHover over my delight!Sweet smiles, mother’s smiles,All the livelong night beguiles.
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.
The world is so full of a number of things,I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
O brave new worldThat has such people in ’t!
All children, except one, grow up.
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