The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; They are weeping in the playtime of the others, II. Do you question the young children in the sorrow, The old man may weep for his to-morrow, The old tree is leafless in the forest The old year is ending in the frostThe old wound, if stricken, is the sorestThe old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland? III. They look up with their pale and sunken faces, For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;" Ask the old why they weep, and not the children, And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, IV. "True," say the young children, "it may happen Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen We looked into the pit prepared to take her- If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, It is good when it happens," say the children, V. Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, Go out, children, from the mine and from the city--Sing out, children, as the little thrushes doPluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips prettyLaugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, VI. "For oh," say the children, we are weary, If we cared for any meadows, it were merely For, all day, we drag our burden tiring, Through the coal-dark underground- VII. "For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn,—our head, with pulses burning, Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling— And sometimes we could pray 'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning), 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" VIII. Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark. IX. Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others, They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us, Is it likely God, with angels singing round him, X. "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember; And at midnight's hour of harm,— Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We know no other words, except 'Our Father,' Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come and rest with me, my child.' XI. "But no!" say the children, weeping faster, And they tell us, of His image is the master, Go to!" say the children,-" up in heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. For God's possible is taught by His world's loving— * A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Horne's report of his commission. The name of the poet of "Orion" "and Cosmo de' Medici" has, however, a change of associations; and comes in time to remind me that we have some noble poetic heat of literature still,-however we may be open to the reproach of being somewhat gelid in our humanity.-E. B. B. |