|
| DO ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, | |
| Ere the sorrow comes with years? | |
| They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, | |
| And that cannot stop their tears. | |
| The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, | 5 |
| The young birds are chirping in the nest, | |
| The young fawns are playing with the shadows, | |
| The young flowers are blowing toward the west: | |
| But the young, young children, O my brothers, | |
| They are weeping bitterly! | 10 |
| They are weeping in the playtime of the others, | |
| In the country of the free. | |
|
| Do you question the young children in the sorrow | |
| Why their tears are falling so? | |
| The old man may weep for his to-morrow | 15 |
| Which is lost in Long Ago; | |
| The old tree is leafless in the forest, | |
| The old year is ending in the frost, | |
| The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, | |
| The old hope is hardest to be lost: | 20 |
| 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? | |
|
| They look up with their pale and sunken faces, | 25 |
| And their looks are sad to see, | |
| For the man’s hoary anguish draws and presses | |
| Down the cheeks of infancy; | |
| “Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary, | |
| Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak; | 30 |
| Few paces have we taken, yet are weary— | |
| Our grave-rest is very far to seek: | |
| Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children, | |
| For the outside earth is cold, | |
| And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, | 35 |
| And the graves are for the old.” | |
|
| “True,” say the children, “it may happen | |
| That we die before our time: | |
| Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen | |
| Like a snowball, in the rime. | 40 |
| We looked into the pit prepared to take her: | |
| Was no room for any work in the close clay! | |
| From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, | |
| Crying, ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day.’ | |
| If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, | 45 |
| With your ear down, little Alice never cries: | |
| Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, | |
| For the smile has time for growing in her eyes: | |
| And merry go her moments, lull’d and still’d in | |
| The shroud by the kirk-chime. | 50 |
| It is good when it happens,” say the children, | |
| “That we die before our time.” | |
|
| Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking | |
| Death in life, as best to have: | |
| They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, | 55 |
| With a cerement from the grave. | |
| Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, | |
| Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do; | |
| Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cow-slips pretty, | |
| Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! | 60 |
| 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, | |
| From your pleasures fair and fine! | |
|
| “For oh,” say the children, “we are weary, | 65 |
| And we cannot run or leap; | |
| If we car’d for any meadows, it were merely | |
| To drop down in them and sleep. | |
| Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, | |
| We fall upon our faces, trying to go; | 70 |
| And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, | |
| The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. | |
| For, all day, we drag our burden tiring | |
| Through the coal-dark, underground, | |
| Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron | 75 |
| In the factories, round and round. | |
|
| “For all day, the wheels are droning, turning; | |
| Their wind comes in our faces, | |
| Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning, | |
| And the walls turn in their places: | 80 |
| Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, | |
| Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, | |
| Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, | |
| All are turning, all the day, and we with all. | |
| And all day, the iron wheels are droning, | 85 |
| And sometimes we could pray, | |
| ‘O ye wheels,’ moaning breaking out in a mad | |
| ‘Stop! be silent for to-day!’” | |
|
| Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing | |
| For a moment, mouth to mouth! | 90 |
| 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 living souls against the notion | 95 |
| 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. | 100 |
|
| Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, | |
| To look up to Him and pray; | |
| So the blessed One who blesseth all the others, | |
| Will bless them another day. | |
| They answer, “Who is God that He should hear us, | 105 |
| While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirr’d? | |
| When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us | |
| Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word. | |
| And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) | |
| Strangers speaking at the door: | 110 |
| Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, | |
| Hears our weeping any more? | |
|
| “Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, | |
| And at midnight’s hour of harm, | |
| ‘Our Father,’ looking upward in the chamber, | 115 |
| We say softly for a charm. | |
| We know no other words except ‘Our Father,’ | |
| And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song, | |
| God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, | |
| And hold both within His right hand which is strong. | 120 |
| ‘Our Father!’ If He heard us, He would surely | |
| (For they call Him good and mild) | |
| Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, | |
| ‘Come and rest with me, my child.’ | |
|
| “But, no!” say the children, weeping faster, | 125 |
| “He is speechless as a stone: | |
| And they tell us, of His image is the master | |
| Who commands us to work on. | |
| Go to!” say the children,—“up in heaven, | |
| Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. | 130 |
| Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving: | |
| We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.” | |
| Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, | |
| O my brothers, what ye preach? | |
| For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving, | 135 |
| And the children doubt of each. | |
|
| And well may the children weep before you! | |
| They are weary ere they run: | |
| They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory | |
| Which is brighter than the sun. | 140 |
| They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; | |
| They sink in man’s despair, without its calm; | |
| Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, | |
| Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm: | |
| Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly | 145 |
| The harvest of its memories cannot reap,— | |
| Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. | |
| Let them weep! let them weep! | |
|
| They look up with their pale and sunken faces, | |
| And their look is dread to see, | 150 |
| For they mind you of their angels in high places, | |
| With eyes turned on Deity. | |
| “How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation, | |
| Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,— | |
| Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, | 155 |
| And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? | |
| Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, | |
| And your purple shows your path! | |
| But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper | |
| Than the strong man in his wrath.” |
