page: 62
The Children
- SPRING!—almost summer! The winter’s gone,
- His reign is over, his hour is done!
- Here’s the crumpled green of the new‐born leaves,
- Here are baby‐sparrows ’neath cottage eaves;
- And the apple orchards are thick with bloom,
- And the woods are gathering their summer gloom;
- And the cottage gardens are gay and bright
- With the wallflower brown and the rock‐plant white;
- And the heart of the risen year beats free
- In meadow and forest, in flower and tree;
- It beats in the prisoned hearts of men,
- Till vaguely, vainly they long again
- For the joy that is promised by every spring,
- The joy no summer will ever bring.
- And the children wander by field and brake,
- And clap their hands for the daisies’ sake.
- The bountiful summer laughs and throws
- Her garment of green and her wreath of rose
- On great vile cities that men have raised,
- Where her name is unloved, unknown, unpraised,
- And only gold is counted of worth
- Of all the gifts of the goodly earth.
- And in this desert that men have made
- Grow white‐faced children that never played
- With daisies and cowslips, nor laughed and lay
- On the hot gray heaps of the scented hay—
- The poor pale children who never have heard
- The perfect song of an uncaged bird:
- They never have gathered a growing flower,
- Or strayed through a wood for a truant hour—
- They sit in groups and they seem to wait,
- Unfriended and hopeless and desolate.
- Do they wait for the hero who is to come
- To teach them the meaning of love and home—
- To take them away from the heavy frown
- Of the high black walls and the cruel town,
- To where there is light and a rest from noise,
- And love for the children of men, and toys?
- Who is to save them? Ah! I and you
- Have the chance and the choice this fair deed to do.
- Where Gold is god, there the children must
- Be ground ’neath his wheels in the bloody dust;
- But if Love be god—and a temple raised
- Where gold shall be cursèd and love be praised—
- When the temple is clean and the altar fair,
- The children their garlands shall bring and bear
- The first of all who shall gather there!
