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THE STREET‐CHILDREN’S DANCE.
- NOW the earth in fields and hills
- Stirs with pulses of the Spring,
- Next‐embowering hedges ring
- With interminable trills;
- Sunlight runs a race with rain,
- All the world grows young again.
- Young as at the hour of birth:
- From the grass the daisies rise
- With the dew upon their eyes,
- Sun‐awakened eyes of earth;
- Fields are set with cups of gold;
- Can this budding world grow old?
- Can the world grow old and sere,
- Now when ruddy‐tasselled trees
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- Stoop to every passing breeze,
- Rustling in their silken gear;
- Now when blossoms pink and white
- Have their own terrestrial light?
- Brooding light falls soft and warm,
- Where in many a wind‐rocked nest,
- Curled up ’neath the she‐bird’s breast,
- Clustering eggs are hid from harm;
- While the mellow‐throated thrush
- Warbles in the purpling bush.
- Misty purple bathes the Spring:
- Swallows flashing here and there
- Float and dive on waves of air,
- And make love upon the wing;
- Crocus‐buds in sheaths of gold
- Burst like sunbeams from the mould.
- Chestnut leaflets burst their buds,
- Perching tiptoe on each spray,
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- Springing toward the radiant day,
- As the bland, pacific floods
- Of the generative sun
- All the teeming earth o’errun.
- Can this earth run o’er with beauty,
- Laugh through leaf and flower and grain,
- While in close‐pent court and lane,
- In the air so thick and sooty,
- Little ones pace to and fro,
- Weighted with their parents’ woe?
- Woe‐predestined little ones!
- Putting forth their buds of life
- In an atmosphere of strife,
- And crime breeding ignorance;
- Where the bitter surge of care
- Freezes to a dull despair.
- Dull despair and misery
- Lie about them from their birth;
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- Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
- Are their earliest lullaby;
- Fathers have they without name,
- Mothers crushed by want and shame.
- Brutish, overburthened mothers,
- With their hungry children cast
- Half‐nude to the nipping blast;
- Little sisters with their brothers
- Dragging in their arms all day
- Children nigh as big as they.
- Children mothered by the street:
- Shouting, flouting, roaring after
- Passers‐by with gibes and laughter,
- Diving between horses’ feet,
- In and out of drays and barrows,
- Recklessly, like London sparrows.
- Mudlarks of our slums and alleys,
- All unconscious of the blooming
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- World behind those housetops looming.
- Of the happy fields and valleys,
- Of the miracle of Spring
- With its boundless blossoming.
- Blossoms of humanity!
- Poor soiled blossoms in the dust!
- Through the thick defiling crust
- Of soul‐stifling poverty,
- In your features may be traced
- Childhood’s beauty half effaced—
- Childhood, stunted in the shadow
- Of the light‐debarring walls:
- Not for you the cuckoo calls
- O’er the silver‐threaded meadow;
- Not for you the lark on high
- Pours his music from the sky.
- Ah! you have your music too!
- And come flocking round that player
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- Grinding at his organ there,
- Summer‐eyed and swart of hue,
- Rattling off his well‐worn tune
- On this April afternoon.
- Lovely April lights of pleasure
- Flit o’er want‐beclouded features
- Of these little outcast creatures,
- As they swing with rhythmic measure,
- In the courage of their rags,
- Lightly o’er the slippery flags.
- Little footfalls, lightly glancing
- In a luxury of motion,
- Supple as the waves of ocean
- In your elemental dancing,
- How you fly, and wheel, and spin,
- For your hearts too dance within.
- Dance along with mirth and laughter,
- Buoyant, fearless, and elate,
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- Dancing in the teeth of fate,
- Ignorant of your hereafter
- That with all its tragic glooms
- Blindly on your future looms.
- Past and future, hence away!
- Joy, diffused throughout the earth,
- Centre in this moment’s mirth
- Of ecstatic holiday:
- Once in all their lives’ dark story,
- Touch them, Fate! with April glory.
